At this point in time, it’s an oddity to come across someone who doesn’t have a credit card. More than three-quarters of US consumers have a credit or charge card. And you probably have more than one, asĀ Americans have 3.84 credit cards in their wallets on average. As ubiquitous as they seem, however, credit cards as we know them are a relatively recent development — Diners Club claims to have launched the first official charge card in 1950. But you can trace the roots of the modern-day credit card much further back in history.
What started as a simple piece of metal or plastic that let you purchase something at the store while paying for it later now lets you make digital payments worldwide, processed nearly instantly, using information you have securely stored on your phone or computer. In many cases, you no longer even need to carry a physical credit card with you. Take a look at how credit has evolved throughout history — and what experts have to say about where credit cards are headed.
The history of credit cards
According to Lewis Mandell, author ofĀ The Credit Card Industry: A History, the idea of credit can be traced back to agrarian life. Farmers needed to find a way to cover the cost of seeds and supplies at planting time and then pay back the debt later, after harvest. Here’s a credit card timeline — from ancient tablets to digital wallets — with major events that shaped the direction of the modern credit card.
5,000 years ago: The ancient credit tablet
The concept of “buy now, pay later” isn’t unique to the last hundred years or so: Credit was the way of the world in ancient times. Mesopotamia may have had the first system of virtual money 5,000 years ago, long before currency as we know it today existed. Cuneiform, an early script, was used to record transactions onto clay tablets as a form of counting and recordkeeping. Debts could even be literally wiped clean, on occasion, to protect debtors. …