The concept of credit is not new. In ancient Egypt and Babylon more than 3,000 years ago merchants bartered with currency and services in order to maximize their spending processes, often collecting what we now call interest on payments that were late or past due. Credit cards themselves, however, didnt surface until the early 1950s.
American Express and the Diners Club were the forerunners in plastic money, and issued their first credit cards to fewer than 200 Americans for use in restaurants and entertainment venues in New York City. More of its kind were issued in New England until the late sixties, but none of these credit cards could be paid off over long periods of time their balances were due immediately. Bank of America issued the Bank Americard in California in 1959, and this was the first card to be accepted almost universally.
In the early 1970s, the first magnetic strip was developed, and this was what launched the use of credit cards as we know them today. Although the magnetic stripe system was used in England in the early 1960s, it was not standardized until the 70s in the United States.
The Bank Americard eventually became Visa, and a...
To view and download this full PLR article, you must be logged in. Registration is completely free. Once you create your account, you will be able to browse, search & downlod from our PLR articles database of over "1,57,897+" on 1,000's of niches and 200+ categories without paying a penny. Click here to signup...
