Looking Backward: More on the Origins of the Credit and Debit Card

The credit card has been around in one form or another, for most of the 20th Century. These days they are a ubiquitous and indispensable part of our lives which nearly all of us just take for granted. We use our plastic credit and debit cards all the time, not only in shops and restaurants, but over the phone and online, to book our holidays, buy tickets for concerts and events, and to make internet purchases. 

We expect every transaction to happen quickly and smoothly; we expect to be rewarded every time we use them with Air Miles or Loyalty Points; and we expect our personal account data to be kept safe and secure from would-be fraudsters and hackers. That’s a lot of expectation, innovation and technology; all contained in the space of an 85.60 × 53.98 mm plastic card.  Where did it all begin?

The earliest known reference to a credit card that I can find occurs in Looking Backward, a utopian novel of 1887 by Edward Bellamy.  This visionary and prophetic book, set in the imagined future of the 21^st Century, was a bestseller in its day, and was an early precursor of the science fiction genre. Like Rip Van Winkle, the protagonist, Julian West, falls into a hypnosis-induced sleep  in the late 19th Century and wakes up 113 years later, in the dramatically changed world of the year 2000.

It predicts the abolition of cash in favour of the credit card, along with other modern developments including the consolidation and globalization of capitalism, the expansion of leisure time for all, and easy accessibility to luxury goods.  Here is an excerpt, explaining how the cash-free system works:

 ‘A credit corresponding to his share of the annual product of the nation is given to every citizen on the public books at the beginning of each year, and a credit card issued him with which he procures at the public storehouses, found in every community, whatever he desires whenever he desires it. This arrangement, you will see, totally obviates the necessity for business transactions of any sort between individuals and consumers. Perhaps you would like to see what our credit cards are like.

"You observe," he pursued as I was curiously examining the piece of pasteboard he gave me, "that this card is issued for a certain number of dollars. We have kept the old word, but not the substance. The term, as we use it, answers to no real thing, but merely serves as an algebraical symbol for comparing the values of products with one another. For this purpose they are all priced in dollars and cents, just as in your day. The value of what I procure on this card is checked off by the clerk, who pricks out of these tiers of squares the price of what I order." ‘

By the 1920s there was a variety of real-life merchant credit schemes in the US. Early examples included schemes to sell fuel to automobile owners and  by 1938 several companies were beginning to accept each other’s cards.  Early cards were printed on paper card, and were easy to forge.  One notable early improvement on the cardboard  version of the credit card was made of metal, and called the Charga-plate.  These metal cards were issued by large-scale merchants, like department stores, and usually kept in the store. Regular customers were thus freed from the necessity of carrying large amount of cash, and at liberty to utter the immortal words ‘Charge it!’ when making a purchase.

According to Wikipedia:-

‘ It held a small paper card for a signature. In recording a purchase, the plate was laid into a recess in the imprinter, with a paper "charge slip" positioned on top of it. The record of the transaction included an impression of the embossed information, made by the imprinter pressing an inked ribbon against the charge slip’

Nathanael West’s 1939 novel Day of the Locust alludes to a form of credit card which I believe to be the ‘Charga-Plate’.  This excerpt comes from Chapter 8 and features a shady customer called Romola Martin:-

"Soon afterwards the manager called and asked him to bring in Miss Martin's credit card…. The manager turned to Homer and took the credit card he was holding. "She owes thirty-one dollars," Homer said. "She'll have to pay up and get out. I don't want her kind around here."

That sounds like a Charga-plate to me, although I can’t find any other evidence of its use in hotels. 

Sadly, Nathanael West is sadly no longer available to check with, as he died an untimely death, at the age of 37 in a traffic collision back in 1940, just one day after the death of his good friend F.Scott Fitzgerald.