Interesting Facts about Credit Cards

Plastic cards are steadily, and we hope for a long time, came into our lives. Few people know that even such convenient and invaluable “assistants” have their own facts and interesting features. Almost 75% of people do not know about the above mentioned, thus we decided to tell you about the most interesting facts about credit cards. Some of the mentioned facts stated in this article might be very interesting and new to you. Most probably you do not have any idea what they are. But do not be upset. Let’s pass directly to the facts:

Everything is to be blamed for an incident

Few people know, but at the moment there are a lot of versions and guesses as to who was the first to come up with the idea of creating a credit card. According to one of the most probable versions, the idea of creating a plastic card belongs to the American Frank McNamara. Mister McNamara has had an incident thanks to which the idea of creating a credit card appeared. Many people would be thankful to him for his invention. If only he could see. Anyway, one evening, Frank visited one of the dining establishments that belonged to him. He, however still had to pay for food. As many would label it as Murphy’s Law, or in other words bad luck, it turned out that he simply forgot his wallet and thought that it would be good to replace a thick and uncomfortable purse with some small object, which would be a convenient place to put your own savings. They say this is how the idea of credit cards started.

Building a credit card skyscraper will not be a problem

According to some data, there are more than 800 million cards in use on our planet as of 2011. The number should have had increased considerably by 2017. They say if you take all these cards and cut them into small pieces, you will get a mountain with a height of at least 250 kilometers. Should be quite easy to make a skyscraper too.

The first owner from Russia

These credit cards appeared in Russia back in 1987. The first owner and honorable holder of the credit card was the general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev. At that time the card was a luxury for ordinary people because only the service fee would have been more than 1 million rubles which is about $17K.

Huge debts and the first place in the book of record

As is known it is only the brave souls who make it to the Guinness Book of Records. One of these can be successfully called the American Walter Kavanagh, who was able to issue in his name more than 1,300 credit cards, while the hero spent in total more than $1500000 dollars. This achievement was included in the record book, for which the American received quite a big amount of money, which, in sum with premiums for advertising on television, was able to fully pay off his debt. Thus, Walter was able not only to successfully spend million dollars but also to become famous and moreover be included in the book of records: Guinness Book.

Sending credit cards by email came up a long time ago

You might have received an envelope stuffing into the mailbox with the plastic card offered in the envelope. As it turned out, this fraud was invented back in 1957 by Bank of America employee Joseph Williams. The above-mentioned person decided that sending out more than 100,000 cards throughout California would allow his bank to make good money and thus conquer all his competitors in such an original way. However, this method led to the fact that only the attackers used the bank’s offers, and the bank eventually remained in large debts ($9 million), for which the author of this idea was soon fired. That sounds quite risky.

Each card has its own identification number

Few people know, but the development of payment tools has led to the fact that the first digit of the credit card number is assigned to its system. For example, a VISA card, almost 70% of all world cards, has a credit card number in the beginning.

Break the cards and lose weight

The Americans conducted research according to which they stated that it is quite energy-consuming to break a credit card. As scientists say, in order to make a piece of ordinary plastic from your credit card, you need to spend 10 to 35 calories, which with the right approach and a large number of credit cards will help you lose weight.

That is all. We hope that the above facts were a novelty for you.