@longtimelurker wrote:My first credit card was a Barclaycard, the only UK Visa. amd had those three horizontal stripes. Then a rival group of banks brought out the "Access" card, which I guess was later taken over by M/C. I was really surprised when I came here to find out that banks would issue both Visa and M/C, because at the time in Britain, each bank would issue only one type, depending which alliance they were in.
Back in 1973 when I obtained my first BankAmericard and Mastercard the Interbank Card the banks ony issued one type of card. In Minnesota a group of investors set up a BankAmericard processing center in Minneapolis and issued the card for Bank America (no one else could issue them). Master Card allowed different banks to sign up with the network but each bank had to approve credit and carry the credit liability with Mastercard serving as the interbank. Remember when Greenwood Trust had Black Discover Cards with the yellow/orange suns (at one time there were three different types of Discover Cards and I had all three with a $15K, $10K and $5K limits). Oh those were the days ... they actually contacted employers to verify income and the app also included a complete financial statement of assets and liabilities. Credit Bureaus were all manual and did their best to fumble their way to credit reports with gossip and other important and oft inaccurate information. Oh yeah .. those were the days 