Considering that now I think it's just about impossible to rent a car *without* a credit card, it is hard to remember that once upon a time, one could. What would the rental companies have used for surety, in the event that the renter simply took off with the car?
I went snooping for the history of credit cards.
MasterCard began in the late 1940s when several U.S. banks started giving their customers specially-issued paper that could be used like cash in local stores. In 1951, The Franklin National Bank in New York formalized the practice by introducing the first real credit card.
And for VISA:
1958
Bank of America, based in San Francisco, California, issues BankAmericard. With the state of California as its market, the card is an early success, and it is the first “revolving-credit” card with universal merchant acceptance, allowing cardholders the option of paying their account balance in installments with a monthly finance charge applied to the remaining balance.
So even though both cards, in some form, had started by then, their usage would have been rather localized.
And interestingly enough, it was in
1966 that both credit card programs expanded and formed larger associations with other banks.
Kathy
