Payment Party: Will Visa and Mastercard be absent?
Words: Prathik Desai
Compilation: Block unicorn
It took nearly a thousand years from the first banknotes of the Tang Dynasty in ancient China to the functional check system. This was followed by wire transfers, which accelerated cross-border trade in the 19th century. But what really changed the way payments were made was a forgotten wallet.
In 1949, Frank McNamara forgot to bring his wallet while having dinner with clients at the Major's Cabin Grill in Manhattan, New York. The incident embarrassed him, but it also led to a pioneering effort to ensure that similar incidents did not happen again. A year later, he returned with the world's first credit card, the Diners Club Card, which eventually evolved into a credit card network that processes billions of transactions every day.
It wasn't long before Mastercard and Visa emerged from the chaos of banking alliances and rebranding, largely driven by the need to survive.
As Bank...