Gyan of the Day - Evolution of Credit Cards

I just can't imagine today's world without credit cards. It's now part of everybodys life. Banks around the world has given credits worth billions of dollars based on these cards. So today's gyan is about when and how this credit card has actually started.

In 1950, Diners Club and American Express launched their charge cards in the USA, the first "plastic money". In 1951, Diners Club issued the first credit card to 200 customers who could use it at 27 restaurants in New York. But it was only until the establishment of standards for the magnetic strip in 1970 that the credit card became part of the information age.



The first use of magnetic stripes on cards was in the early 1960's, when the London Transit Authority installed a magnetic stripe system. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit installed a paper based ticket the same size as the credit cards in the late 1960's.

The word credit comes from Latin, meaning "trust". Do you think it still holds the meaning :-)