97 Fun Facts About Credit Cards

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

Company legend says he found he had left his wallet behind while dining with clients in Manhattan; versions differ on how the bill got paid, and the firm's first press agent said it never happened at all.

Which hotel chain originated the Carte Blanche charge card?

Hilton's own hotel card was renamed Carte Blanche in 1958; Citibank's forerunner bought it in 1966, was made to sell it by regulators two years later, and bought it back in 1978.

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?

Fresno was chosen because about 45% of its residents already banked with Bank of America, enough cardholders from the first day to persuade local merchants to accept the card.

How did Bank of America distribute its first BankAmericards in 1958?

By unsolicited mail: working cards simply turned up in the post, and other banks copied the tactic, sending out some 100 million across America before Congress outlawed it in 1970.

BankAmericard's launch cost Bank of America millions of dollars; what went so badly wrong?

Unpaid bills and fraud soared, and the bank lost millions; yet by May 1961 the card was in profit, a fact the bank kept quiet for years so that rivals would stay away.

In the 1970s the BankAmericard licensees around the world united under which single brand name?

Visa suited everyone: banks abroad had balked at putting an American bank's name on their cards, and the new word sounds much the same in every language.

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

Dee Hock, a bank manager from Seattle, argued that no single bank should own a card network; the member-owned body he came to lead in 1970 became his model for what he called 'chaordic' organisations.

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

Master Charge was a name coined by a bank in Louisville, Kentucky; the Interbank group adopted it for its national card in 1969 and kept it for ten years.

What two colours are the overlapping circles of the Mastercard logo?

Red and yellow circles are so widely recognised that in 2019 Mastercard dropped its own name from the logo and left the two discs to speak for themselves.

In which New York town is Mastercard headquartered?

Purchase is said to owe its name to 'Harrison's Purchase', a tract a Quaker settler bought from Native Americans in 1695; the hamlet is also home to PepsiCo's headquarters.

What is Mastercard's long-running advertising tagline?

'Priceless' has run since 1997 on one line: 'There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard.' The word now also brands the firm's travel and city offers.

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

A freight forwarding company, moving parcels and valuables; when fellow directors refused to extend the business to California, founders Henry Wells and William Fargo set up Wells Fargo to do it.

Which product did American Express launch in 1891?

The traveller's cheque came about after the firm's president returned from Europe fuming at how hard it was to cash letters of credit, and had his staff devise a cheque that needed only a matching second signature.

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

The Centurion Card answered a rumour: talk of a secret black card for the elite had gone round for years, and in 1999 American Express decided to cash in on the story by making one.

Which retailer introduced the Discover card in 1985?

Sears, then America's largest retailer, wanted to sell financial services too; its Discover card undercut the banks by charging no annual fee and paying a little cash back.

The first Discover card sale, for $26.77 in September 1985, was rung up in which southern city?

Atlanta hosted the trial run; launched nationwide the next year, the card won customers from older rivals by charging no yearly fee and paying cash back on spending.

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

Barclaycard began as a British licensee of an American bank's card and had the market to itself for six years, until rival banks launched Access in 1972.

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.

What does the 'APR' quoted on every credit card offer stand for?

Annual percentage rate: card interest is worked out monthly or daily, but lenders must quote it as a yearly figure so that borrowers can compare one offer with another.

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.

What sets a charge card apart from an ordinary credit card?

The bill is due in full each month, with no option to roll the debt over and pay interest; in return, most charge cards come with no preset spending limit.

The international standard that fixes the size of every credit card also defines the size of which far smaller card?

The SIM card began life at full credit-card size, and small SIMs were long supplied in a card-sized carrier to be snapped out; the same standard also sizes passport booklets.

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

The last digit is a Luhn check digit, worked out from all the others with a formula by IBM's Hans Peter Luhn; it catches mistyped numbers but gives no protection against fraud.

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

The issuer is shown by these digits, known as the BIN; they come from a register kept by the American Bankers Association, and small card programmes often borrow a sponsor bank's BIN rather than get their own.

Which short-range wireless technology lets a smartphone pay with a tap at the till?

NFC, or near-field communication, reaches only about four centimetres, which is why the phone has to be held almost against the reader before anything happens.

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 does an American Express card carry its security code?

Four digits on the front, printed above the card number; Visa, Mastercard and Discover all use three digits on the back, beside the signature strip.

What must an online shop do with a card's security code after a sale?

Erase it: the code is there to check online and phone orders, where no PIN can be keyed in, and card-industry rules bar shops from storing it once a payment is approved, so a stolen customer database is worth far less to a thief.

What do the letters EMV stand for?

Europay, Mastercard and Visa drew up the chip-card standard together; one of the three has since vanished, Europay having merged into Mastercard in 2002, but the letters stayed.

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

France put a chip standard on its national bank cards in 1986, years ahead of everyone else; the smart card had been patented there in 1974 by the inventor Roland Moreno.

After the US 'liability shift' of October 2015, who pays for counterfeit-card fraud at a store with no chip reader?

The merchant: the loss now falls on whichever side has not moved to chip technology, a rule Europe had used since 2005 to push shops into replacing swipe-only terminals.

What usually cancels a credit card's interest-free grace period on new purchases?

Carrying over a balance means new purchases start costing interest at once; pay each statement in full by the due date and borrowing on the card for those weeks costs nothing.

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

$50 is the most a cardholder can be made to pay for a thief's spending, and only if the card is used before its loss is reported; report it first and the liability is nothing.

Under the 2009 Credit CARD Act, what must applicants under 21 provide to get a card?

Proof of income or a co-signer: the Act also barred card firms from handing out free gifts on campus to sign students up, and made lenders give 45 days' notice of a rate rise.

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

The Schumer box is named after Chuck Schumer, the New York congressman behind the 1988 law that makes every card offer set out its rates and fees in one plain table, so that shoppers can compare.

When does a credit card cash advance usually start to cost interest?

From the day of withdrawal: the interest-free grace period covers purchases only, so cash taken out on a card starts running up interest at once.

Which card fee did the EU cap at 0.3% for credit cards in 2015?

The interchange fee is the main part of what a shop pays to take a card, a cost that ends up in the prices everyone pays, so the EU capped it at 0.3% on credit cards and 0.2% on debit.

UnionPay, which by 2015 was handling more money than any other card network, is the national scheme of which country?

China: founded in 2002 with the central bank's approval, UnionPay is the only network that links every bank's cash machines in the country, which gave it a vast home market.

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 took over a network Citibank had owned since 1981; in 2025 the buyer was itself bought, when Capital One acquired Discover.

What happens to a card balance under 'negative amortization'?

It keeps growing: each minimum payment is smaller than the interest added, so a borrower can pay on time every month and still owe more than the month before.

After the Supreme Court's 1978 Marquette ruling, a national bank could charge card customers anywhere the interest rate allowed in which state?

Its own home state: the ruling let banks export their local interest rates across the country, which set states competing to attract card issuers with looser laws.

Which US state lured Citibank's credit card operations in 1981 by loosening its limits on interest rates?

South Dakota's governor, Bill Janklow, pushed the invitation through while his farm economy struggled; Citibank, squeezed by New York's rate caps, moved its card business to Sioux Falls.

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

The Truth in Lending Act carried the ban until the provision expired in 1984; several states then passed laws of their own to keep card surcharges illegal.

The international card brand JCB, founded in 1961, comes from which country?

Japan: the letters once stood for Japan Credit Bureau; since a 2006 alliance, JCB cards have worked on the Discover network in America and Discover cards at JCB terminals in Japan.

In card-industry terms, what is a chargeback?

A disputed payment reversed by the card's bank, which takes the money back from the shop; the threat alone gives shops a reason to settle complaints and refund quickly.

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.