Welcome to the World of Credit Cards

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Credit Card
A credit card is a system of payment named after the small plastic card issued to users of the system. A credit card is different from a debit card in that it does not remove money from the user's account after every transaction. In the case of credit cards, the issuer lends money to the consumer (or the user).


It is also different from a charge card (though this name is sometimes used by the public to describe credit cards), which requires the balance to be paid in full each month. In contrast, a credit card allows the consumer to 'revolve' their balance, at the cost of having interest charged. Most credit cards are the same shape and size, as specified by the ISO 7810 standard

Discover Credit Card

The credit card was the successor of a variety of merchant credit schemes. It was first used in the 1920s, in the United States, specifically to sell fuel to a growing number of automobile owners. In 1938 several companies started to accept each other's cards.

The concept of using a card for purchases was invented in 1887 by Edward Bellamy and described in his utopian novel Looking Backward.
The concept of paying merchants using a card was invented in 1950 by Ralph Schneider and Frank X. McNamara in order to consolidate multiple cards.

Bank of America created the BankAmericard in 1958, a product which eventually evolved into the Visa system ("Chargex" also became Visa). MasterCard came to being in 1966 when a group of credit-issuing banks established MasterCharge. The fractured nature of the US banking system meant that credit cards became an effective way for those who were traveling around the country to, in effect, move their credit to places where they could not directly use their banking facilities. In 1966 Barclaycard in the UK launched the first credit card outside of the US.


There are now countless variations on the basic concept of revolving credit for individuals (as issued by banks and honored by a network of financial institutions), including organization-branded credit cards, corporate-user credit cards, store cards and so on.


In contrast, although having reached very high adoption levels in the US, Canada and the UK, it is important to note that many cultures were much more cash-oriented in the latter half of the twentieth century, or had developed alternative forms of cash-less payments, like Carte blue, or the EC-card (Germany, France, Switzerland, among many others). In these places, the take-up of credit cards was initially much slower. It took until the 1990s to reach anything like the percentage market-penetration levels achieved in the US, Canada or UK. In many countries acceptance still remains poor as the use of a credit card system depends on the banking system being perceived as reliable.


In contrast, because of the legislative framework surrounding banking system overdrafts, some countries, France in particular, were much faster to develop and adopt chip-based credit cards which are now seen as major anti-fraud credit devices.

Bank Credit Card

A user is issued credit after an account has been approved by the credit provider, with which the user will be able to make purchases from merchants accepting that credit card up to a pre-established credit limit.

When a purchase is made, the credit card user agrees to pay the card issuer. The cardholder indicates their consent to pay, by signing a receipt with a record of the card details and indicating the amount to be paid or by entering a PIN. Also, many merchants now accept verbal authorizations via telephone and electronic authorization using the Internet, known as a Card not present (CNP) transaction.

Electronic verification systems allow merchants to verify that the card is valid and the credit card customer has sufficient credit to cover the purchase in a few seconds, allowing the verification to happen at time of purchase. The verification is performed using a credit card payment terminal or Point of Sale (POS) system with a communications link to the merchant's acquiring bank. Data from the card is obtained from a magnetic stripe or chip on the card; the latter system is in the United Kingdom commonly known as Chip and PIN, but is more technically an EMV card.

Other variations of verification systems are used by eCommerce merchants to determine if the user's account is valid and able to accept the charge. These will typically involve the cardholder providing additional information, such as the security code printed on the back of the card, or the address of the cardholder.

Each month, the credit card user is sent a statement indicating the purchases undertaken with the card, any outstanding fees, and the total amount owed. After receiving the statement, the cardholder may dispute any charges that he or she thinks are incorrect. Otherwise, the cardholder must pay a defined minimum proportion of the bill by a due date, or may choose to pay a higher amount up to the entire amount owed. The credit provider charges interest on the amount owed (typically at a much higher rate than most other forms of debt).

Credit card issuers usually waive interest charges if the balance is paid in full each month, but typically will charge full interest on the entire outstanding balance from the date of each purchase if the total balance is not paid.

Credit Card Services

As well as convenient, accessible credit, the cards offer consumers an easy way to track expenses, which is necessary for both monitoring personal expenditures and the tracking of work-related expenses for taxation and reimbursement purposes. Credit cards are accepted worldwide, and are available with a large variety of credit limits, repayment arrangement, and other perks (such as rewards schemes in which points earned by purchasing goods with the card can be redeemed for further goods and services or credit card cashback).

Some countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and France limit the amount for which a consumer can be held liable due to fraudulent transactions as a result of a consumer's credit card being lost or stolen.

Credit Card Security

The low security of the credit card system presents countless opportunities for fraud. This opportunity has created a huge black market in stolen credit card numbers, which are generally used quickly before the cards are reported stolen.

The goal of the credit card companies is not to eliminate fraud, but to "reduce it to manageable levels", such that the total cost of both fraud and fraud prevention is minimized. This implies that high-cost low-return fraud prevention measures will not be used if their cost exceeds the potential gains from fraud reduction.

Most Internet fraud is done through the use of stolen credit card information which is obtained in many ways, the simplest being copying information from retailers, either online or offline. Despite efforts to improve security for remote purchases using credit cards, systems with security holes are usually the result of poor implementations of card acquisition by merchants. For example, a website that uses SSL to encrypt card numbers from a client may simply email the number from the webserver to someone who manually processes the card details at a card terminal. Naturally, anywhere card details become human-readable before being processed at the acquiring bank is a security risk. However, many banks offer systems such as ClearCommerce, where encrypted card details captured on a merchant's webserver can be sent directly to the payment processor.

Controlled Payment Numbers are another option for protecting one's credit card number: they are "alias" numbers linked to one's actual card number, generated as needed, valid for a relatively short time, with a very low limit, and typically only valid with a single merchant.


The way a credit card-owner pays off his/her balances has a tremendous effect on his/her credit history. All the information is collected by credit bureaus. The credit information stays on the credit report for 7 years except for bankruptcies, which remain for 10 years

Profits and Losses

In recent times, credit card portfolios have been very profitable for banks, largely due to the booming economy of the late nineties. However, in the case of credit cards, such high returns go hand in hand with risk, since the business is essentially one of making unsecured (uncollateralized) loans, and thus dependent on borrowers not to default in large numbers.

Minimum Payments

In the UK, there has recently been increasing concern about the minimum payments required on outstanding credit card balances. Until the mid-1990s the required minimum monthly payment was generally 5% of the outstanding balance, but competition in the last 15 years to attract customers has led to this figure being eroded on the premise that the minimum monthly payment to service a debt will be lower. Typically, credit card companies now only require a monthly minimum payment of between 2% and 3% of the outstanding balance, or a fixed cash fee, whichever is the greater. For example, on a debt of £1,000, the card holder can expect to pay back only £20 - £30 per month.

Unfortunately, some people are not aware of how long it can take to repay a debt when only paying the minimum each month. An example of this: by paying 2.5% of the debt each month, while accruing interest at 14% (in line with modern credit card interest rates), it can take over 14 years to pay back an original debt of £1,000, and roughly £10,500 will have been paid back.

It has recently been suggested that credit card companies include a warning on their statements discouraging customers from paying only the minimum, however few companies have so far acted upon this. Companies which do include a warning tend not to inform customers how long full repayment will take, i.e. they discourage users from making just minimum payments but do not explain why. Less financially savvy customers may ignore these empty warnings as a result.

Starting in 2006, most US credit card companies regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have been required to increase customers' minimum payments to cover at least the interest and late fees from the prior statement plus 1% of the outstanding balance. The reason is to avoid a negative amortization situation which may result when the previous 3% minimum was enforced. Negative amortization is when the payment to the creditor fails to cover the amount of interest charged during that period. This causes the consumer's credit card balance to continually increase.

Trailing Interest

Trailing interest, sometimes called final or residual interest, is a method of calculation whereby interest is charged right up until the day of a full payment. Cardholders of banks that use this method receive a bill with the balance owing and interest accrued and pay it off in full. On the next statement they are billed a "final" amount of interest even if no purchases or cash advances have been debited since. The reason for this is that interest continues to accrue from the time of the close of the previous statement until the day the payment for that statement is actually received.

In comparison to the normal method of interest calculation, this method is judged by many to be a hidden and thus unfair cost. Uninformed cardholders often inquire as to what amount they need to pay by their due date in order to have paid off their credit card in full and to stop interest from accumulating. They then proceed to pay off this amount under the belief that they are finished paying interest charges, only to find trailing interest on their next statement which was posted to their account on the day of the statement billing (so even if they check their balance a day before that next billing date, it would still show a zero balance).

Hidden Costs

Merchants pay a negotiated fee -- typically 1-3% for larger merchants and 3-6% for smaller merchants -- to process credit payments. They must also bear the cost of providing a point-of-sale solution to enable the acceptance of card transactions and other card services related expenses. Credit card issuers understand full well that if card holders were aware of and made to pay these additional costs with their purchases it would tend to discourage credit card usage. As a consequence, businesses who accept credit cards often must sign a "merchant agreement" or contract with the acquirer that stipulates that they are not allowed to offer different prices for card and non-card transactions (sometimes referred to as surcharging) despite the additional costs to the business for accepting the cards. The prohibition on surcharging or cash discounts is enforced by law in some countries, although some governments are beginning to lift this restriction (see below).

Some critics have observed that this results in what is effectively a hidden tax on all transactions conducted by merchants who accept credit cards since they must build the cost of transaction fees into their overall business expense. Furthermore, cash and other non-credit card using customers are in effect made to subsidize credit card user purchases. The cost of the convenience and protections enjoyed by card holders and the profits taken from transaction fees by the card industry (which has come to rely increasingly on this revenue stream over the years) is in part borne by the non-card purchaser. Critics further note that the customers most likely to pay in cash are probably the least able to afford the additional expense, the argument going that card holders are more likely to be affluent and non-card holders less so.

A counterargument is that there are also costs to the merchant in other forms of payment. For cash payments these include frequent trips to the bank or use of an armored delivery service, theft, and employee error, such that cash is actually not cheaper for the merchant than credit cards

Credit Card Numbering

The numbers found on credit cards have a certain amount of internal structure, and share a common numbering scheme.

The card number's prefix, called the Bank Identification Number, is the sequence of digits at the beginning of the number that determine the bank to which a credit card number belongs. This is the first six digits for Mastercard and Visa cards. The next nine digits are the individual account number, and the final digit is a validity check code.

In addition to the main credit card number, credit cards also carry issue and expiration dates (given to the nearest month), as well as extra codes such as issue numbers and security codes. Not all credit cards have the same sets of extra codes nor do they use the same number of digits.

Credit Cards in ATMs

Many credit cards can also be used in an ATM to withdraw money against the credit limit extended to the card but many card issuers charge interest on cash advances before they do so on purchases. The interest on cash advances is commonly charged from the date the withdrawal is made, rather than the monthly billing date. Many card issuers levy a commission for cash withdrawals, even if the ATM belongs to the same bank as the card issuer. Merchants do not offer cashback on credit card transactions because they would pay a percentage commission of the additional cash amount to their bank or merchant services provider, thereby making it uneconomical.

Many credit card companies will also, when applying payments to a card, do so at the end of a billing cycle, and apply those payments to everything before cash advances. For this reason, many consumers have large cash balances, which have no grace period and incur interest at a rate that is (usually) higher than the purchase rate, and will carry those balance for years, even if they pay off their statement balance each month.

Credit Cards as Funding for Entrepreneurs

Credit cards are a creative, yet often risky way for entrepreneurs to acquire capital for their start ups when more conventional financing is unavailable. It is rumoured that Larry Page and Sergey Brin's start up of Google was financed by credit cards to buy the necessary computers and office equipment, more specifically "a terabyte of memory". [5] Similarly, filmmaker Robert Townsend financed part of Hollywood Shuffle using credit cards.[6] Director Kevin Smith funded Clerks. in part by maxing out several credit cards. Richard Hatch also financed his production of Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming partly through his credit cards. Famed hedge fund manager Bruce Kovner began his career (and, later on, his firm Caxton Associates) in financial markets by borrowing from his credit card