When we got home from vacation a couple weeks ago, I unburdened my pockets and dumped all the credit card receipts on the desk. These crumpled slips of paper offered a record of just about everything we spent. Everything from gas, meals and groceries to a couple boxes of mints and bottled water at a convenience store in rural Georgia.
I still had most of the cash I had started with. Actually, it wasn’t much to begin with. We used the credit card for everything.
When I was a kid we used to spy on old Mr. Warner when he bought something at the store or had lunch at the café. He would pull out a wad of money that would literally choke a horse. I think it was a point of pride for people in town to understand that Mr. Warner could afford to buy just about anything. He already owned several businesses, and the joke was he wouldn’t quit until he bought the town streets and everybody had to pay him to drive on them. I remember converting my paper route money to singles so I could imitate Mr. Warner.
Credit cards got started in 1900 with the oil companies – sort of an early version of today’s gas cards. It wasn’t until 1946 that a Brooklyn banker got the idea of issuing an actual credit card. The rub was, you had to have an account at that bank to get the card. And, you could use it only at businesses that were customers of the bank.
Diners Club showed up four years later, and by 1951 the company sported 20,000 cardholders. The cards themselves were paper until Diners issued the first plastic cards in 1961.
American Express had been issuing money orders since 1850 and finally got into the general credit card business in 1958. The problem with both Diners and American Express was cardholders had to pay them off every month.
The revolving balance card started in 1966 with BankAmericard. After a few short years a consortium of banks joined with Bank of America to form the Visa Assn. MasterCard wasn’t far behind. And in 1987 American Express issued its first revolving balance card.
Everybody including the family dog has credit cards today. It’s interesting to note that MasterCard world headquarters is in the small town of Purchase, N.Y.
And I’m sure Mr. Warner would still enjoy showing off his wealth today by pulling out a gigantic stack of credit cards.
