The first time the phrase “credit card” appeared was in a science fiction novel. It was a super bestseller of the last years of the 1800s in a novel which was only the second book in the United States to sell over a million copies. Only Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold more. Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000-1887 tells the story of a man who falls asleep and finds himself in a new and better world, over hundred years into the future. It was a world with wonderful socialism where retirement was at the age of 45, where cable telephones presented in-home entertainment (sermons in those days!) and where goods were delivered almost immediately after having been ordered.
This book records the first time the word credit card was used in English. It appears 11 times in the work. For example “A credit card issued to him which he procures … whatever he wants whenever he desires it.” Actually it was more of a debit card, and as stated the book was a science fiction novel. But this part of Bellamy’s imagination took only 20 years to become reality with Western Union issuing charge cards in 1914, followed by many department stores which kept charge accounts for customers.
It was Diners Club in 1950 with a focus on restaurants and American Express in 1957 which started the credit card business in a big way, signing up many merchants and using the first card which has since become standard. But it took another ten years before credit cards found their way to Europe, first to England with the Barclaycard in 1966.
Being able to pay in a cashless way was the dream in Looking Backward. Bellamy’s card was a debit card, where the money was paid immediately. He would certainly have been shocked at the reality of today in the United States – with 20% annual interest rates being nothing unusual and over 1.5 billion cards in circulation, 5 for each person living in the United States.
Did you like the article? Then please like and share it on Facebook, tweet it on Twitter or add it in Google+.
