A brief history of credit cards
1950- the Diners Club issued the first credit card in the United States, useful for New York restaurant bills only. 27 restaurants accepted the card as payment.
1958- American Express first issued cards usable at various retailers, not restricted to restaurants. Not truly a credit card, charges were required to be repaid monthly.
1958- BankAmerica issued the BankAmericard (now visa), the first bank credit card. They are Bank of America now, after merger with Nations bank in 1998. This was truly a credit card, not requiring the full balance to be repaid monthly.
1966- the Interbank Card Association was formed, later known as Mastercharge, and Mastercard. This was the first credit card that was issued by multiple banks.
1986- Dean Witter Financial Services Group introduced the Discover Card.
Sears Consumer Financial Corporation changed its name to NOVUS Credit Services Inc in 1993, and they all became Morgan Stanley following a merger in 1997.
BTW, BankAmerica is generally credited with starting "banker's hours"- closing the banks at 3pm.
Back in the 1940's, BankAmerica was the largest bank on the west coast. Soldiers in WW2 were using the bank quite heavily, resulting in the need to close the bank at 3pm in order to process the checks by 5pm!
BA pioneered modern electronic check recognition and processing in order to cope with the volume of checks, and as a result- had significantly higher efficiency than other banks. What took many man-hours at other banks was done via automation at BankAmerica.. This efficiency and speed allowed it to expand, and in the 1970's, it became the worlds' largest banking institution. Citibank later took that distinction, outgrowing BofA by purchasing up several smaller banks. Citibank is now being challenged by HSBC.
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