50 free Credit Cards trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This credit cards trivia quiz starts with the metal charge coins and Charga-Plates of the early 20th century, the Air Travel Card, the forgotten-wallet legend behind Diners Club and the 1958 Fresno mailing that launched BankAmericard and, eventually, Visa. It follows the birth of Master Charge, Barclaycard, Discover and the American Express Centurion card, and the unsolicited card drops that Congress finally banned in 1970. The second half is about how cards actually work: the standard size, the Luhn check digit, the security code on the back, the meaning of EMV, the difference between a charge card and a credit card, grace periods, interchange fees, cash advances and the consumer protections in the Credit CARD Act of 2009. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our credit unions and money quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year did Diners Club produce the first general-purpose charge card?
1950
Ralph Schneider and Frank McNamara wanted one card that many merchants would accept, and it had to be paid in full each month.
Q 02Per company legend, what did Frank McNamara forget at a restaurant in 1949, inspiring Diners Club?
His wallet
Diners Club calls his return visit the following February "The First Supper", though its own press agent later said the story was invented.
Q 03How many participating restaurants did Diners Club list when its card was first introduced?
27
About 200 of the founders' friends and acquaintances were the first cardholders.
Q 04In which year did Diners Club introduce its first plastic card?
1961
Early cards were cardboard; by the mid-1960s the club had 1.3 million members.
Q 05In which California city did Bank of America launch BankAmericard in 1958?
Fresno
The bank chose it because 45% of residents were customers and its isolation would limit the damage if the test flopped.
Q 06Roughly how many unsolicited cards did Bank of America mail out in its initial 1958 "drop"?
65,000
By October 1959 the whole of California had been saturated with more than 2 million cards.
Q 07How much did Bank of America officially lose on the launch of BankAmericard?
Over $8.8 million
Including advertising and overhead the true loss was probably nearer $20 million, yet the card was in profit by May 1961.
Q 08In which year did the BankAmericard licensees unify under the name Visa?
1976
Barclaycard, Carte Bleue, Chargex and Sumitomo Card all adopted the new name, keeping the blue, white and gold flag.
Q 09Who was Visa's first CEO, the man who also coined its name?
Dee Hock
He had joined in 1968 to run BankAmericard's Pacific Northwest rollout and computerised the system in 1973.
Q 10What was Mastercard called when a group of banks created it in 1966 to compete with BankAmericard?
Master Charge
Citibank's Everything Card was merged into it in 1969, and the name became MasterCard in 1979.
Q 11The two overlapping circles of the Mastercard logo came from which regional banking group?
Western States Bankcard Association
The "Master Charge" name itself was coined by the First National Bank of Louisville, Kentucky.
Q 12In which New York town is Mastercard headquartered?
Purchase
The company has been publicly traded since 2006; before that it was a cooperative owned by more than 25,000 financial institutions.
Q 13What is Mastercard's long-running advertising tagline?
Priceless
The campaign has been applied to both its credit and debit products.
Q 21Which airline helped create the Air Travel Card in 1934, letting passengers buy now and pay later?
American Airlines
Cardholders got a 15% discount, and by 1941 about half of airline revenues came through the scheme.
Q 22In which year were unsolicited mass mailings of credit cards outlawed in the United States?
1970
By then roughly 100 million cards had been dropped on the public, including, Life magazine complained, on drunks and compulsive debtors.
Q 23Which 1888 utopian novel by Edward Bellamy describes a concept it calls credit cards?
Looking Backward
Bellamy's cards actually work more like modern debit cards, drawing on a citizen's share of national output.
Q 14American Express was founded in 1850 in Buffalo, New York, as what kind of business?
A freight forwarding company
Two of its founders, Henry Wells and William Fargo, went on to start Wells Fargo in 1852.
Q 15In which year did American Express issue its first charge card?
1958
That first card was paper; the gold card followed in 1966, green in 1969 and platinum in 1984.
Q 16What is the invitation-only American Express card launched in 1999, nicknamed the 'black card'?
Centurion
Amex's other famous marketing line, "Don't Leave Home Without It", dates from 1975.
Q 17Which retailer introduced the Discover card in 1985?
Sears
It was the first credit card with no annual fee, and its credit manager Ray Kennedy Sr. conceived it.
Q 18What was the value of the first trial Discover transaction, at an Atlanta Sears in September 1985?
$26.77
Discover later became the first card to offer a "Cashback Bonus" on purchases.
Q 19Which was the first credit card issued outside the United States, launched in 1966?
Barclaycard
It began as a charge card and became a true revolving credit card in November 1967 once the Bank of England agreed.
Q 20What was the Charga-Plate, used in US stores from the 1930s to the late 1950s?
An embossed metal card imprinted onto sales slips
Farrington Manufacturing developed it in 1928, and some stores kept the plates in their own files rather than giving them to customers.
Q 24How does a charge card differ from a credit card?
The balance must be repaid in full each cycle
Credit cards let the holder carry a revolving balance and pay interest on it.
Q 25What are the standard dimensions of a credit card under the ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1 standard?
85.60 by 53.98 mm
ATM and debit cards share the same format, with corners rounded to a radius of about 3 mm.
Q 26What does the final numeral of a payment card number represent?
A Luhn check digit
The formula, devised by IBM scientist Hans Peter Luhn, catches mistyped numbers but is not a security measure.
Q 27What do the first six or eight digits of a card number identify?
The issuer
This issuer identification number, or BIN, starts with a major industry identifier digit.
Q 28How many digits can a payment card number have?
8 to 19
Most Visa cards use 16, but some old ranges still use 13.
Q 29Which scientist created the "mod 10" check-digit formula used by most credit card numbers?
Hans Peter Luhn
He worked at IBM, and the algorithm is now in the public domain and specified in ISO/IEC 7812-1.
Q 30Where is the security number printed on an American Express card?
A four-digit code on the front
Visa, Mastercard and Discover put a three-digit code on the back, to the right of the signature box.