100 Fun Facts About Credit Cards

In which year did Diners Club produce the first general-purpose charge card?

Diners Club issued its charge card in 1950, after Frank McNamara and Ralph Schneider wanted a single card that many New York merchants would accept.

Per company legend, what did Frank McNamara forget at a restaurant in 1949, inspiring Diners Club?

Company legend says McNamara forgot his wallet at New York's Major's Cabin Grill; Diners Club dubbed his return visit 'The First Supper', though its own press agent later called the story invented.

Which hotel chain originated the Carte Blanche charge card?

Carte Blanche began as the Hilton Hotels credit card in the late 1950s, a travel-and-entertainment card competing with Diners Club before Citibank acquired it.

In which year did Diners Club introduce its first plastic card?

Diners Club switched from cardboard to its first plastic card in 1961; the earliest cards had been printed on paper stock.

In which California city did Bank of America first test-launch BankAmericard?

Bank of America chose Fresno because about 45% of its 250,000 residents already banked there and the city's isolation would contain any failure.

Roughly how many unsolicited cards did Bank of America mail in its initial BankAmericard 'drop'?

Bank of America's initial mailing sent roughly 65,000 unsolicited BankAmericards to one city's residents; within a year more than 2 million cards had been issued across California.

How much did Bank of America officially lose on the launch of BankAmericard?

Bank of America's official loss on the BankAmericard launch was over $8.8 million; counting advertising and overhead the true figure was nearer $20 million, yet the card soon turned profitable.

In which year did the BankAmericard licensees unify under the name Visa?

The BankAmericard licensees around the world unified under the single name Visa in 1976, keeping the card's blue, white and gold flag design.

Who was Visa's first CEO, the man who also coined its name?

Dee Hock, who had run a Seattle bank's BankAmericard licence, became the first CEO of the member-owned card association and picked the name Visa.

What was Mastercard called before it adopted its current name in 1979?

Master Charge was the brand of the Interbank Card Association's card from 1969 until the 1979 renaming to MasterCard; Citibank's Everything Card was absorbed into it in 1969.

The two overlapping circles of the Mastercard logo came from which regional banking group?

The Western States Bankcard Association, a group of California banks, created the interlocking-circles logo; the Interbank Card Association acquired the rights to it in 1969.

In which New York town is Mastercard headquartered?

Mastercard's global headquarters sits in Purchase, a hamlet in the town of Harrison in Westchester County; the company has been publicly traded since its 2006 IPO.

What is Mastercard's long-running advertising tagline?

Mastercard's 'Priceless' campaign began in 1997 with the line 'There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard.'

American Express was founded in 1850 in Buffalo, New York, as what kind of business?

American Express started as a freight forwarding company, an express business moving parcels and valuables; founders Henry Wells and William Fargo went on to start Wells Fargo in 1852.

In which year did American Express issue its first charge card?

American Express issued its first charge card in 1958 on paper stock; the Gold Card followed in 1966, the green card in 1969 and the Platinum Card in 1984.

What is the invitation-only American Express card launched in 1999, nicknamed the 'black card'?

The Centurion Card is offered by invitation to American Express's highest spenders; the company created it in 1999 after an urban legend about a secret black card spread.

Which retailer introduced the Discover card in 1985?

Sears launched Discover in 1985 through its Dean Witter financial arm; the card charged no annual fee and paid a cash-back bonus, both unusual at the time.

What was the value of the first trial Discover transaction, in Atlanta in September 1985?

The first trial Discover transaction, rung up at an Atlanta store in September 1985, came to $26.77; the card rolled out nationally the next year.

Which was the first credit card issued in the United Kingdom, launched in 1966?

Barclaycard, launched by Barclays in June 1966, was Britain's first credit card; it began as a charge card and offered revolving credit from November 1967.

What was the Charga-Plate, used in US stores from the 1930s to the late 1950s?

The Charga-Plate was an embossed metal card imprinted onto sales slips; Farrington Manufacturing developed it in 1928 and some stores kept the plates on file rather than giving them to customers.

Which airline helped create the Air Travel Card in 1934, letting passengers buy now and pay later?

American Airlines and the Air Transport Association created the Air Travel Card in 1934; holders got a 15% discount, and by 1941 about half of airline revenues came through the scheme.

In which year were unsolicited mass mailings of credit cards outlawed in the United States?

Congress banned unsolicited credit card mailings in 1970, after roughly 100 million cards had been dropped on the public, including, Life magazine complained, on drunks and compulsive debtors.

Which 1888 utopian novel by Edward Bellamy describes a concept it calls credit cards?

Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) uses the term 'credit card', though his cards work more like modern debit cards, drawing down each citizen's share of national output.

How does a charge card differ from a credit card?

A charge card's balance must be repaid in full each cycle, while a credit card lets the holder carry a revolving balance and pay interest on it.

What are the standard dimensions of a credit card under the ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1 standard?

ID-1 cards measure 85.60 by 53.98 mm, the same format used for ATM and debit cards, with corners rounded to a radius of about 3 mm.

What does the final numeral of a payment card number represent?

The last digit is a Luhn check digit; the mod-10 formula, devised at IBM in the 1950s, catches mistyped numbers but is not a security measure.

What do the first six or eight digits of a card number identify?

This issuer identification number, or BIN, starts with a major industry identifier digit.

How many digits can a payment card number have?

ISO/IEC 7812 allows a card number of 8 to 19 digits; most Visa and Mastercard numbers use 16, while older Visa ranges used 13.

Which IBM engineer devised the magnetic stripe card in 1960?

IBM engineer Forrest Parry devised the magnetic stripe card in 1960; the story goes that his wife suggested fixing the stripe to the plastic with a clothes iron.

Where is the security number printed on an American Express card?

American Express prints a four-digit code on the front of the card, above the account number; Visa, Mastercard and Discover put a three-digit code on the back.

An employee of which company invented the card security code in the UK in 1995?

Equifax employee Michael Stone devised the card security code in the UK in 1995 as an eleven-character alphanumeric string; APACS later trimmed it to three digits.

What do the letters EMV stand for?

EMV stands for Europay, Mastercard and Visa, the three companies that created the chip-card standard in the mid-1990s; it is now managed by the EMVCo consortium.

Which country deployed the first national smart payment card standard in 1986?

France deployed the Bull-CP8 'M4' smart card standard for its Carte Bancaire network in 1986, years ahead of EMV; its banks later migrated the whole card and terminal network to EMV.

When did the EMV fraud "liability shift" take effect for merchants in the United States?

From 1 October 2015, US merchants without chip-capable terminals became liable for counterfeit card fraud, a decade after the UK's 2005 liability shift.

What is the typical range of a credit card grace period?

Grace periods usually run 20 to 55 days depending on the card and bank, and most cards offer none at all if a balance is carried over from the previous statement.

US federal law limits a cardholder's liability for unauthorised credit card use to what figure?

15 U.S.C. § 1643 caps a cardholder's liability for unauthorised credit card use at $50, and the Fair Credit Billing Act sets out the dispute process.

Under the 2009 Credit CARD Act, how much notice must a card company give before raising fees?

The Credit CARD Act requires 45 days' notice before rate or fee increases; most provisions took effect on 22 February 2010, and it also made over-limit charges opt-in.

What is the name of the standardised disclosure table that US credit card advertising must include?

The Schumer box is named after Chuck Schumer, who as a New York congressman pushed through the 1988 Fair Credit and Charge Card Disclosure Act requiring the table.

What fee do credit card cash advances typically incur?

Cash advances typically cost a fee of 3–5% of the amount, and interest accrues from the moment the money is withdrawn, with no grace period.

What cap did the EU impose on interchange fees for consumer credit cards in April 2015?

The EU's 2015 Interchange Fee Regulation capped consumer credit card interchange at 0.3% of the transaction value, and debit cards at 0.2%.

How much did US credit card companies collect in interchange fees in 2008?

Interchange fees collected from US merchants in 2008 totalled about $48 billion, which worked out at an average of $427 per family.

Roughly how many credit cards existed in the world in June 2018?

Roughly 7.75 billion credit cards were in circulation worldwide in June 2018; the United States alone had 1.09 billion in 2020, held by 72.5% of American adults.

Which company bought the Diners Club network from Citigroup in 2008 for $165 million?

Discover Financial paid Citigroup $165 million for Diners Club International in 2008; Citibank had owned the club since 1981.

Which credit card practice did US federal regulators ban in 2003?

Negative amortization, where minimum payments fall short of finance charges so the balance grows, was banned by US regulators in 2003 because it masked the true quality of a lender's portfolio.

Which 1978 Supreme Court case helped break the regional monopolies of the early US credit card industry?

In Marquette v. First of Omaha (1978) the Supreme Court let national banks charge their home state's interest rate nationwide, opening regional card markets to out-of-state competition.

Which US state's repeal of interest-rate caps drew Citibank's card operations there in 1981?

Citibank moved its credit card operations to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1981 after the state repealed its interest-rate caps, letting the bank charge higher rates nationwide.

Until 1984, which US federal law prohibited surcharges on card transactions?

A mid-1970s amendment to the Truth in Lending Act banned surcharges on card payments until it lapsed in 1984, after which several states passed their own surcharge bans.

As of 2010, which country stayed cash-oriented, with cards used mainly at big merchants?

Japan remained a largely cash-based society in 2010, with credit cards accepted mainly by large merchants; cashless payment grew sharply there over the following decade.

Under which ISO/IEC standard does a credit card's magnetic stripe conform?

ISO/IEC 7813 specifies the magnetic stripe tracks on financial transaction cards; the card's physical size follows the separate ID-1 format.

In card-industry terms, what is a chargeback?

A chargeback is a disputed payment reversed and returned to the cardholder by the card-issuing bank, with the amount debited from the merchant, often plus a dispute fee.

Which household appliance fixed the first magnetic stripe to a card, as an IBM engineer's wife suggested?

A clothes iron did it: the tape would not stick to the plastic until the engineer's wife Dorothea, busy ironing, suggested melting the stripe on.

Which painter's reclining nude did Liu Yiqian buy for $170 million, paying by American Express card?

Amedeo Modigliani painted Nu couché in 1917. The sale at Christie's in New York set a record for the artist and ranked among the most expensive paintings ever sold.

Card-industry slang gives which name to customers who pay in full every month and owe no interest?

Deadbeats is the trade's wry label, because a customer who never carries debt earns the bank no interest. The actor Ben Stein was one documentary's example.

Two founders of American Express started which other bank in 1852 to serve gold-rush California?

Wells Fargo was Henry Wells and William Fargo's answer when fellow directors objected to extending American Express operations to California.

Which investor bought 5% of American Express after the 1963 salad oil scandal sank its shares?

Warren Buffett took advantage of the plunge that followed Tino De Angelis's fraud, in which tanks pledged as full of salad oil held mostly water.

Which warehouse club, long loyal to American Express alone, switched its credit cards to Visa in 2016?

Costco was the last major US merchant to take American Express exclusively, and the card company's profit fell 10% in its first quarter without the deal.

The word credit comes from the Latin verb credere, which carried which of these meanings?

To trust is the root idea: Latin creditum meant a thing entrusted to another, and English used credit for belief and faith before it meant a loan.

Which reward was the Discover card among the first to offer when it reached the public in 1986?

Cash back set Discover apart: a percentage of what the holder spent was refunded to the account, a perk the card branded Cashback Bonus.

Which sporting event did Visa begin sponsoring in 1986, becoming the only card accepted at its venues?

The Olympic Games tie-up proved lasting: Visa added the International Paralympic Committee in 2002 and later signed on with the Olympics through 2032.

An unrelated rider on the 2009 Credit CARD Act let visitors carry what in America's national parks?

Firearms were the point of the rider, which gun-rights senators led by Tom Coburn attached to the card bill after a judge struck down a similar Bush-era rule.

Which country launched the RuPay card network in 2012 to give itself a domestic payment system?

India named the network by blending rupee and payment, after its central bank called for a domestic, open system of payments.

Which Twitter co-founder started Square in 2009 to help sellers accept card payments?

Jack Dorsey founded the firm, since renamed Block, after his friend Jim McKelvey lost a sale of his glass faucets because he could not take a card.

Which credit-scoring brand, launched in 1989, came from two men who met at the Stanford Research Institute?

FICO is short for Fair, Isaac and Company, the firm that engineer Bill Fair and mathematician Earl Isaac founded in 1956.

Which Wall Street investment bank issued the Apple Card when it launched in the United States in 2019?

Goldman Sachs took the job and paid for it: by January 2023 the bank had reportedly suffered $1 billion in losses because of the card.

Under the 2009 Credit CARD Act, Americans below what age need a co-signer or proof of income to get a card?

21 is the cut-off, and the same law stops card companies wooing students with free pizza and T-shirts at university-sponsored events.

Which paper product did American Express launch in 1891, in denominations running from $10 to $100?

The traveler's cheque came from employee Marcellus Berry, who had been asked to find a better solution than the letter of credit.

Which American Express card tier arrived in 1984, eighteen years after the Gold Card?

Platinum joined a ladder that had begun with a humble paper card, on which the account number and the member's name were simply typed.

Which milestone did US credit card balances first pass in 2023, on the New York Fed's count?

$1 trillion was passed in the second quarter of 2023, when balances jumped $45 billion in three months to reach $1.03 trillion.

Which word names the original sum borrowed, the amount on which a lender charges interest?

Principal has meant a main sum of money since the early 15th century, and interest is the charge worked out on top of it.

Which kind of credit card, a common first step for people with no borrowing record, needs a cash deposit?

Secured cards are backed by a deposit account that the cardholder owns, and the bank can dip into it if the holder stops paying.

What does the A stand for in APR, the figure used to compare borrowing costs between credit cards?

Annual is the word: APR gives the interest for a whole year rather than a monthly rate, so loans of different kinds can be set side by side.

Which kind of card takes money straight from the holder's own bank account instead of running up a debt?

Debit cards spend money the holder already has: each purchase comes out of the bank account instead of being added to a balance to repay later.

What were the very first Diners Club charge cards made of when the scheme began in New York?

Cardboard was all it took: Frank McNamara settled a restaurant bill with the new card and a signature, a meal the company calls The First Supper.

Which Chicago-based credit bureau was formed in 1968 as a holding company for a railway tank car business?

TransUnion was set up to own a maker of rail tank cars, which makes the credit bureau a descendant of Standard Oil.

Which lender, spun off from Virginia's Signet Bank in 1994, was first named OakStone Financial?

Capital One grew from Richard Fairbank and Nigel Morris's idea of using statistics to tailor card offers to different kinds of customer.

Which card network, founded only in 2002, later overtook both Visa and Mastercard by total value of payments?

UnionPay was launched in Shanghai with the approval of China's central bank, and four of the country's big state banks were its first members.

Which state's Financial Center Development Act, pushed by Governor Pete du Pont, drew more than thirty banks?

Delaware hoped the 1981 law would attract just two New York banks; it ended up making the small state a capital of the credit card business.

Which telegraph company is credited with handing customers the very first charge card, back in 1914?

Western Union opened charge accounts for its customers and gave them a card to prove it, decades before banks issued cards of their own.

What is the term for moving debt from one credit card to another, often to enjoy a low introductory rate?

Balance transfers are encouraged by most card companies as a way of winning customers from their rivals.

What charge of up to about 3% is added when a card is used to pay in another country's currency?

Foreign transaction fees are not charged everywhere: a few financial institutions ask nothing at all for spending in another currency.

What kind of interest is charged on earlier interest as well as the original debt, making card bills snowball?

Compound interest also goes by the old name anatocism. Its opposite, simple interest, never adds earlier interest to the sum being charged.

What term describes borrowing that becomes available again as soon as a card balance is paid down?

Revolving credit has no fixed number of payments, unlike an installment loan, so the sum on offer falls and rises as money is borrowed and paid back.

The 2009 Credit CARD Act takes its acronym from Card, Responsibility, Disclosure and which other word?

Accountability completes the name of the law, which President Barack Obama signed on 22 May 2009 after the Senate had passed it by 90 votes to 5.

Which 1974 US law barred lenders from rejecting applicants because of their sex or marital status?

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act answered years in which lenders had openly held female applicants to different standards from male ones.

Which 1974 US law lets cardholders contest a statement error by writing to the lender within sixty days?

The Fair Credit Billing Act protects only those who put the complaint in writing: a phone call, however angry, does not trigger its safeguards.

Which US benchmark, about three points above the federal funds target, do many variable card APRs track?

The prime rate serves as the index, and a card adds a fixed value on top, known as the spread or margin, to set the interest it charges.

Which word names the practice of charging unlawfully high interest on a loan?

Usury first meant charging any interest at all on a loan, around 1300, and only later came to mean charging too much.

What is the name for the temporary block a hotel or fuel pump places on part of a card's limit?

An authorization hold reduces the funds available until the merchant settles the final bill, and on a credit card it can linger for as long as thirty days.

Which four-digit number classifies a shop's line of business, deciding which card rewards a sale can earn?

A merchant category code is assigned when a business first starts accepting cards, and riskier lines of business pay higher fees.

Which name did Amadeo Giannini give the lender he founded in 1904, the future creator of BankAmericard?

The Bank of Italy served Italian immigrants who faced discrimination elsewhere, and it took the Bank of America name in 1930.

Alfred, a chairman of Diners Club dubbed the father of the credit card, was heir to which New York store?

Bloomingdale's money stood behind Alfred Bloomingdale, who launched a rival card business called Dine and Sign and merged it with Diners Club in 1951.

Matty Simmons, the first press agent of Diners Club, later ran the company behind which humour magazine?

National Lampoon made Simmons famous: his publishing firm was renamed after the magazine, and he also worked as a film and television producer.

Which comedian starred in the 1963 film The Man from the Diners' Club, co-written by The Exorcist's author?

Danny Kaye starred for director Frank Tashlin, working from a screenplay by William Peter Blatty and John Fenton Murray.

Which bank launched affinity cards in 1983 by putting Georgetown University's name on plastic for its alumni?

MBNA's Charles Cawley won over the alumni association of his own alma mater first, and tie-ups with other universities, clubs and sports teams followed.

What name was given to raising a cardholder's rate over a missed payment to an entirely unrelated lender?

Universal default clauses sat in the agreements of roughly half of US card banks by the mid-2000s, before a 2009 law outlawed most forms of the practice.

Which alliance of banks formed in 1966 to rival BankAmericard and went on to become Mastercard?

The Interbank Card Association grew out of a meeting in Buffalo, called after Bank of America refused Marine Midland a licence for being too big.

Which interest method adds up what a cardholder owes on each day of the cycle, then divides by the days?

The average daily balance method had a harsher cousin, the two-cycle version, which also counted the previous cycle's balances until a 2009 US law banned it.

The physical Apple Card launched in 2019, for shops that cannot take Apple Pay, was cut from which metal?

Titanium carries the holder's laser-etched name and little else: the card shows no number, security code, expiry date or signature.

Which British card brand did Lloyds, Midland and National Westminster launch together in 1972?

Access was run as a joint venture from Southend-on-Sea, with each of the three founding banks owning 30% of the company behind it.

In a card payment, what is the industry name for the bank that processes sales on the shop's behalf?

The acquirer gives the shop a merchant account and pays over each day's card takings, minus reversals and fees.