what was interbank network for electronic transfer inet 
interbank network for electronic transfer inet processed credit and debit card transactions between financial institutions fis it handled the transferring of funds from cards bearing the mastercard inc ma logo prior to the introduction of banknet understanding interbank network for electronic transfer inet interbank network for electronic transfer inet dealt with the transfer of funds while mastercard s interbank national authorization system inas processed card authorizations interbank national authorization system inas was the first component of mastercard s global telecommunications network providing electronic authorization to replace earlier phone authorization technology interbank network for electronic transfer inet followed later offering electronic settlement services to replace the previous system in which banks sent each other paperwork eventually interbank network for electronic transfer inet and interbank national authorization system inas were combined into a single entity named banknet a global telecommunications network linking all mastercard card issuers acquirers and data processing centers into one financial network banknet facilitates payments across the world it has been in operation since 1997 and can handle millions of secure transactions each hour via its thousand plus data centers littered all over the globe before banknet a payment through mastercard took approximately 650 milliseconds to process banknet has cut down that time to 210 milliseconds banknet s architecture is based on a peer to peer protocol that routes transactions to various endpoints data centers are equipped with technology that provides redundancy and automatic activations of backup services in the event that a shutdown occurs banknet s architecture allows the regulation of bandwidth in accordance with demand this function is crucial to regulate the capacity of the system at peak times such as during the holiday shopping season for this technology and others banknet primarily partners with at t inc banknet also provides a transaction research service for chargeback requests this makes it possible for cardholders to get approved chargebacks in just a few hours the banknet hub and data warehouse is one of the largest in the world and can be used by issuers and analysts to research payments and retail transactions mastercard vs visamastercard inc ma runs one of the largest credit and debit card networks according to creditcard com there were 249 million mastercard credit cards in the u s and 725 million cards in the rest of the world at the end of march 2021 1mastercard s banknet technology gives it a big advantage over its rival visa inc v instead of using a peer to peer network visa handles transactions through a centralized or star based system this type of network connects its many endpoints to only a few main data centers in other words that means that if one of mastercard s data centers fails there should be many others online whereas if one of visa malfunctions a larger portion of transactions are likely to be affected still in terms of global dominance mastercard continues to play catch up to visa creditcard com data shows that visa is the largest of the four major u s credit card networks there were 343 million visa credit cards in circulation in the u s and 798 million visa credit cards in circulation outside of the u s at the end of september 2020 1