Credit Cards

The History of Credit Cards

Credit is a term that is widely used in our daily lives nowadays. It can be explained as the method of selling any goods or services to the buyer while buyer has no cash in his/her hands. Credit cards provide particular amount of credit to customers.

It is a known fact that more than 170 million people in United States have credit cards and more than %89 of them uses their credit cards on daily basis. An average credit card owner has 4 separate credit cards. This roughly means only in United States there are almost 680 million credit cards are in the financial circulation.

Each credit card has designed to carry an unique identifying number. This system is vital to speed up the shopping process. The credit card user base is so huge, it would be impossible to identify each user without such an unique identification system.

According to various sources, credit card term has been used in Europe at late 1800s. They were offered by merchants to their customers to directly buy the products that merchant offers. First known examples of credit cards can be seen in United States at early 1920s. It was issued to customers by luxury restaurants, gasoline companies and hotels. As it can be seen, initially credit cards were used in very limited places; however today it is possible to use credit cards almost everywhere in the world as a strong alternative for cash.