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‘Carry Your Credit in Your Pocket’: The Early History of the Credit Card at Bank of America and Chase Manhattan

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  • Wolters, Timothy

Abstract

Drawing from newly available archival material, this article explores the early history of one of today’s most ubiquitous financial instruments, the bank credit card. It focuses on the managerial decisions that led to the implementation and development of charge card programs at the two largest American banks of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Even though the initial performance of the two programs was comparable, top management at each bank ultimately adopted different business strategies. The differences resulted from managers’ contrasting interpretations of the appropriate market for the credit card, interpretations formed within the context of two distinct banking cultures.

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  • Wolters, Timothy, 2000. "‘Carry Your Credit in Your Pocket’: The Early History of the Credit Card at Bank of America and Chase Manhattan," Enterprise & Society, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(2), pages 315-354, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:entsoc:v:1:y:2000:i:02:p:315-354_00
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    Cited by:

    1. David S. Evans & Richard Schmalensee, 2005. "The economics of interchange fees and their regulation : an overview," Proceedings – Payments System Research Conferences, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue May, pages 73-120.
    2. Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo & Buckley, Tom, 2021. "Early “Frictions” in the Transition towards Cashless Payments," MPRA Paper 108834, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Laferté, Gilles, 2014. "Economic identification: A contribution to a comparative socio-history of credit markets," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 15(3), pages 5-11.
    4. Lipartito, Kenneth, 2011. "The narrative and the algorithm: Genres of credit reporting from the nineteenth century to today," MPRA Paper 28142, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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