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1950s Credit Cards

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The year was 1950 and people wanted to have a new and improved way to pay for things. In 1949, Frank X McNamara went out to eat with some of his friends and had a bill quite large, so when he was going to pay for the meal he forgot his wallet, in embarrassment he called his wife from the dinner to bring his wallet. From that experience, he never wanted to have that happen again. So he invented a card that could be used to buy things like shoes, clothes, large appliances and can even be used at different locations like gas. So in the 1950s, people used credit to buy expensive things and thus the credit card was born. The idea was simple but far too complex, get anything on your "credit" and you could pay it later or at the end of the month, but with interest. The idea was a good one until people did not pay for the bill later on. Some of the first cards were made out of cardboard or celluloid. The cardboard did not last that long it was getting damaged really fast and could not be kept for at least a month. It was hard to manage a cardboard in your wallet for several days and got soft and flimsy thry didn't like it so they tried it with celluloid, this type of material was highly flammable even warmth could set it on fire. That was better than having a piece of paper in your …show more content…

And that's just in the United States. The card has become more secure and can be managed in the palm of your hands. From freezing your account to making deposits it can be even more secure to making online, over the phone, and on your phone/apps by the touch of your phone. That's how the credit card evolved from being a cardboard to cheap flammable plastic and now a card you can wear out. In the end the credit card was invented by a man that couldn’t pay his bill in a restaurant and thought of one of the best thing that people nationwide could use and that forever changed the way we paid for

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