Interesting Facts about Credit Cards!

[creditreview]

One day i was a little bored and thought: "why not to find some funny facts about credit cards?" :)))
So I desided to make a small collection of interesting facts about "plastics" that I didn't know before hand. I looked throgh the variety of web-sites, interviewed some cardholders and bankmanagers and after that put everything I learnt here!!!!

• At first, credit cards were just charge accounts, offered by individual stores and only usable at those stores and the first credit card that could be used at multiple locations was offered by The Diner’s Club in 1950.
• MasterCard and Visa are networks of banks and financial institutions. American Express is its own company and Discover Card is a subsidiary Morgan Stanley (who is spinning off the business).
• The Visa logo colors were chosen because the blue represented the sky and the gold represented color of the hills in California where Bank of America was founded.
• It's interesting to know that when you use your card, you agree to the cardholder agreement, you don’t have to sign anything. If you get an update to the agreement, you also agree to the updates once you use your card.
• Some interesting fact about the size was given in one site: "ever notice all your credit cards are of uniform shape and size? Their dimensions are governed by the ISO 7810 standard, an international standard for identification cards. Banking cards, as well as driver’s licenses and retail cards, follow ID-1 (passports follow ID-3). If your card has a smart chip, it follows ISO 7816, and if it has RFID, it follows ISO 14443."
• Interested to know about the Magnetic Stripes in a card. Hmmm... There are generally two types of magnetic strips, high-coercivity and low-coercivity, with the high-coercivity being stronger and more durable (also requiring more expensive equipment to handle). Higher-coercivity are usually black and low-coercivity strips are a dark brown, but there are special cases such as American Express’ patented silver colored magnetic strip.
• it occers that minors, those under the age of 18, are not obligated to pay back any charges to their credit cards (unless a parent co-signs, but then its the parent who is on the hook) because they are not allowed to enter into a binding contract.

And one more: There is no federal law regulating the rate of interest a credit card company can charge! The federal government use to regulate but repealed those laws during the Great Depression and never put them back in place, they now rely on the states to handle usury.
Of course you can find some more interesting facts about credit cards in the global net! You are welcome!!!