Brief History of Payment Cards

Brief History of Payment Cards
The practice of buying things on credit is not new. It is thousands of years old.

Sellers sold their goods and services on credit, maintaining customer accounts in their books often without a collateral or guarantee.

Customers pay when they have the means to do so. However, credit cards developed not just because people did not have any money to pay for purchases but people did not want to carry wads of hard cash with them all the time.

It is a lot of convenience and safer to be billed later for purchases then having to carry cash in pocket. Convenience is the primary value proposition for payment cards.

Realizing this, some establishment in the early part of the twentieth century started giving account cards to their trusted customer. This was particularly suitable for companies that had multiple and dispersed outlets such as oil companies.

A motorist could purchase fuel at any station belonging to a particular oil company. The General Petroleum Corporation of California, later Mobil Oil, issued cards to employees and customers in 1914 that could only be used the company’s sales outlets. This was the first store cards.

Towards the middles of the century banks began to think of creative ways to tap this growing market. The Flatbush National Bank in New York introduced a ‘Charge It’ plan in 1947 and a few years later Franklin National Bank was the first to issue credit cards.

But the banking sector in general was slow in developing the new product. Other companies were quicker in realizing the immerse possibilities.

Dinners Club, according to company lore, was the brainchild of two visionaries Frank McNamara and Ralph Schneider. They were dine at a New York restaurant sometime in the year 1950 when to their embarrassment they discovered they did not have any cash.

It is unclear how they resolved the problem but it made a lasting impression on them, and gave birth to a well organized club of friends and colleagues.

About the same time, a New York based travel company called American Express was so impressed that it started its own club. Its merchant base also consisted mainly of restaurant, hotels, transport company, and selected store. In time, American Express outstripped its rival to lay the foundations of a global business that still flourishes to this day.
Brief History of Payment Cards

Colonel Sanders of KFC

Colonel Sanders of KFC
KFC story began at the turn of last century, when a young boy, Harland Sanders, became an accomplished cook through ‘family necessity’.

He spent considerable years doing casual work and serving in the United States Army, where he received the title ‘Colonel.’

Anyway, at age forty, Colonel Sanders purchased a service station, motel and café in a small town in Kentucky.

Over the next ten years he tried different seasonings to flavor his chicken.

From this experimentation evolved ‘his secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices and the basic cooking technique which is still used today’.

He sold the business when the town was bypassed by a highway.

He then travelled the United States by car, cooking chicken for restaurant owners and their employees.

If the reaction was favorable Sanders entered into a handshake agreement in a deal which stipulated a payment to him of a nickel for each chicken the restaurant sold.

By the age of sixty five the Colonel had 600 Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchise outlets dotted across the United States and Canada.

This as 1964, the year is which he sold the American business for $2 million , leading to another rags to riches story.
Colonel Sanders of KFC

History of Boeing Company

History of Boeing Company
Shortly after the Wright brother’s famous flight, William Boeing assembled his first seaplane and established the Boeing B&W Seaplane Company in 1916.

On May 9, 1917, the company became the “Boeing Airplane Company.”

In the 1930s and 1940s Boeing manufactured bombers and aircraft for commercial transport.

In 1954 the company developed the first prototype of 707, which ultimately revolutionized our travel around the world.

In 1967 McDonnell Douglas was formed by a merger of two separate companies, McDonnell and Douglas.

The merged company continued to manufacturer commercial aircraft, combat aircraft and space vehicles.

McDonnell Douglas introduced the DC-3, which became so popular that 90 percent of the world’s air travelers flew on them.

North American Aviation Inc. was first established in 1928.

In the beginning the company focused its business primarily on small, single engine to avoid competing with manufacturer of large, multi-engine aircraft.

During the late 1930s the company also began to make military aircraft. According to the company, between the years 1939 – 67 the company built more military aircraft than nay other aircraft manufacturer in the United States.

McDonnell Douglas developed Mercury and Gemini, the manned space flights in the early 1960s. In 1968 Boeing introduced its jumbo jet, the 747, to meet the growing demand for air travel and MacDonnell Doulas developed the F-4 Phantom II fighter aircraft.

The business interests of Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and North American began to intersect in the 1960s when they became partners on the NASA Apollo Program, followed by the International Space Station.

The three companies finally merged in December 1996 to become the New Boeing.

A prime motive for the merger was to compete more effectively with rivals.
History of Boeing Company