What determines if a credit card is valid or not?

What I mean is that Im renting a room at a hotel. They need a ID and a valid Credit Card. What determines if a credit card is valid or not.|||a major card is probably what they want not a check card with a visa or mastercard logo or a pre paid card, or perhaps they mean not lost / stolen/ cancelled or otherwise. They can easily check it out by calling the credit card company and doing a merchant authorization to be sure it's a good card. And the best thing to do would be to call the place you want to rent from and ask them.|||If charges can be added to it.|||Normally it is determined by its expiration date.


The company will definitely check and if the payment hasn't gone through, they can easily identify that the card is either cancelled, not valid or validated