He decide to start with restaurants. He later created a cardboard card, with the holder's name and account number on the front, and a list of the twenty-eight that accepted the card on the back; the annual cost was five dollars. Convenience played a major part in his idea, since more expensive goods were demanded by the public, they had to carry lots of bills and coin around.
In 1951, the Franklin National bank of New York created a card that was unlike the Diner's Club; they made a card that wasn't just limited to restaurants, hotels, and travel expenses,as the Diner's Club card was, but could be used everywhere. Later, other banks started their own "charge card," such as the Bank of America started the BankAmericard, later to be known as Visa, and a California bank started a card which was to become Mastercard.
BankAmericard started out strong by using a radical idea at the time; they mailed cards to anyone with a name and an adress. This started a big problem with stolen cards and people calling fraudulent cases for cards they hadn't asked for, or even received. The Fair Credit Billing Law of 1974 addressed these problems years after they started, but they still protect credit users today.
Avancements for the credit card were not many, but those few were huge advances. The first was the birth of the plastic card, begun by the Diner's Club. This allowed the owners name and account number to be embossed on the card. The ATM was invented in 1969 and was a big advancement on credit cards. It introduced the magnetic stripe on the back of the card. Before this advancement, merchants had to call up the company and get a payment guarantee on each transaction. With this advancement, the transaction took place automatically over a modem.
Secondary types began with anti-fraud and the smart-card. Anti-fraud cards began with an increased number of fraud cases. It became much more easier to duplicate the information held inside a credit card.
