Do Visa and Mastercard store Credit Card Numbers?

Question

Visa and Mastercard claims they provide a communication network to connect card issuers around the world for payment transaction, each card issuers i.e. banks, issue their cards and for Visa cards it starts with 4 and for mastercard it starts with 5. How do Visa or Mastercard recognise these card issuers to be able to connect and charge the card. Do the Card issuers send all the cards they issued to Visa and Mastercard to store and identify when there is a transaction, or do Visa and Mastercard generate and send the card nos to issuers?, or do Visa and Mastercard offer a platform in their server where issuers can generate the cards? How does it work?

Answer 1

Lets just thin k about it for a while .

Now, if banks just made up their own numbers, what's to stop :-

1) Two banks issuing the same number ?? (or one bank issuing the same number multiple times ?)

2) Criminals making up their own numbers and getting away with it ?

(actually criminals they DO make up their own numbers .. however plainly they DON'T usually get away with it ...)

Plainly all card numbers are generated by the Card companies and passed to the Banks. These then link a new card number to a customer and inform the Card co. of the names & addresses ..