The first credit card in Australia was the Bankcard, but due to competitive pressures from Visa and MasterCard, it withdrew from the market in 2006. The credit card is an innovation borne in the Twentieth Century. The first credit card came into being in 1950. Before that time, all transactions in retail stores had to be done in cash or by cheques.
The First Credit Card
It all started in 1949 when Frank McNamara, then head of the Hamilton Credit Corporation went out to eat with Alfred Bloomingdale, the grandson of Bloomingdale’s founder. They also had Bloomingdale’s attorney along. Talk turned to a client who was having trouble paying back his credit charges to individual stores. At the end of the meal, McNamara discovered that he had not brought his wallet along, and had to call his wife to bring him some cash to pay for the meal.
After this happened, McNamara thought about the problem of credit cards and not having the cash to pay for the meal, and came up with the idea of a credit card that could be used in various establishments for the purchase of all types of goods. He came up with the idea of a middleman issuing the cards. McNamara presented his idea to the attorney and to Bloomingdale. They decided that they would start a credit card company and call it the Diners Club. The Diners Club would be the middle man issuing the credit cards. Thus, the first credit card was borne. They started out by signing up restaurants where salesmen often visited. They then issued 200 of these cards in 1950, making it the first credit card of its kind. These first cards were not plastic, but rather paper stock. It took awhile before the concept took off, as the merchants were afraid of losing their customers as the salesmen would no longer be using their individual store cards. By the end of 1950, there were over 20,000 Diners Club cards in use. There was no competition until 1958 when Bank Americard and American Express came into existence. Bank Americard later became Visa. There you have the history of the first credit card. Thousands of lives and the way of doing business have been changed by the idea of independently issued credit cards by Frank McNamara and the act of accidentally leaving his wallet at home.
