Surprisingly enough, in the 1800s there was an author who wrote a book that was a time travel sci-fi type of story.  It was a time travel story about a man going from the year 2000 back to 1887.  The book came out in 1887 and predicted what modern life would be like in 2000.  After living through the 90s to now, I would love to sit down and read this book and see what they thought life would be like in the 2000s back in 1887.  The author depicted a world where money had become obsolete, and everyone paid for everything with a plastic card, credit system.  The system that the people lived by was described as a pretty socialist society, but this mentioning of people using a plastic credit card system was first mentioned in a fictional book.   This book was called 'Looking Backward' and was written by Edward Ballamy.  What makes these predictions primarily so fascinating is that the mentioning of these credit cards predates the actual invention of them by almost a century, and predates any other mentioning of the idea!

A little bit later in about 1946 a man by the name of John Biggins had created the first card called the "charg-it" card.  The charge it card was a credit card exclusively given to Flatbush National Bank holders in Brooklyn, New York.   This card worked almost like a credit card.  It was the first bank to merchant card to have ever existed.  The bank account holder would get a flat small metal plate from the bank that was imprinted with numbers, similar to today's plastic credit cards. The way it worked was the associated merchants at the end of each day would submit papers with lists of charges made by the Charg-it card holders and the amounts due.  The bank would forward the merchant the money to cover the expenses and then send the consumer a monthly bill for the amount credited with an interest placed on top.  

There was a similar system that was invented a little while later, but a little earlier than the official credit cards as we know them today.  It was the Diner's Club Card, now an international banking card called the Diner's Club International. This luxurious company originally started out in New York City with a businessman, Frank McNamara with the help of Ralph Schneider, Matty Simmons, and Alfred S. Bloomingdale. The idea came about when Frank McNamara was taking a small group of clients out to a diner for a meal and meeting.  He had wound up forgetting his wallet, where his wife was kind enough to cover the meal, but he felt very embarrassed.  He wound up with the idea spawning in his head of a multi-charge credit system in his mind. He later discussed the idea with the diner owner with his attorney and his close friend and wound up creating the first non-exclusive credit system.  Shortly after the three gentlemen had returned for a meal and Frank McNamara had paid for the meal with a small card sized piece of cardboard with a signature on it, using credit.  Shortly later, Frank had found a way to turn this piece of cardboard into a whole sellable system of credit that still operates today. 

After the multiple ideas had come to light of creating a credit system, there was finally the right person in the right place to create the system of credit cards as we know it today.  In 1958 Bank of America had created the first credit card call the Bank of Americard.  The company had chosen to start with Fresno, California residents.  They made this decision, because the town was big enough to have a decent population to preform their experiment with, but small and contained enough that if it went wrong it wouldn't become a huge problem for the company to clean up.  They also knew that about 45% of residents in Fresno were members of Bank of America, so they would be working with convincing people who were already familiar with them, and shared a relationship.  Bank of America decided to dive head first right in.  There was no marketing commercials, they simply sent out 60,000 fully activated credit cards to bank members within the town.  Three Hundred of these residents accepted the offer and began to use this card.  This became known as the 'Fresno Drop' in history. By 1973 Bank of America had created their own POS (Point Of Sale) electronic system to process the payments.  Six years later magnetic strips were added to credit cards to make them swipeable for easier use.

It's kind of interesting when you think of a curiosity that pops into your mind and then learn a little bit about it.   By this point in society it's almost hard for us to imagine a life before credit cards or electronic payments. They have become such a big part of our lives. It's also interesting to see the way that credit cards have really been around almost 100 years. Even cooler to realize that the first time it was thought of was in the 1880's in a fiction book. How creative of Edward Ballamy! So the next time you swipe your card or use your tap pay, you'll know what it took to get there.