The 16-digit account number stored in your card's magnetic stripe zooms across a leased phone line to the merchant's bank, zips under the Pacific to Visa's data center outside Tokyo and rides the Visa network to the data center of your issuing bank in Delaware.

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In 1993 the People's Bank of Hainan decided to establish a provincial financial-data network using a credit card with a microchip.

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Created by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, the institute has announced support from the Omidyar Network and from the World Bank, to help collect evidence globally on the benefits of open data and train senior people who will lead open data initiatives in developing countries.

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