The credit card industry has its roots in the first card that was started by Frank McNamara of the New York’s Hamilton Credit Corporation.

For him it was a simple solution for the businessmen to carry something more easily than the wads of cash and these were used only for their business related expenses.

Little did he know that he was starting a dangerous trend. Going down the history lane a bit, Frank started with the Diners club card, and as the name suggests this had the list of twenty seven restaurants on the back that were willing to accept this piece of pasteboard. Yes, plastic card were issued much later in the year 1955 while the pasteboard card were issued in 1950.

Visa as we know today was originally the card issued by the Bank of America by the name Bank Amerced. Bank of America convinced a lot of smaller banks to join the system which eventually became Visa. Visa has grown to become a large behemoth with 400 million cards issued as of 1996.

In total about 12 million merchant establishments accept the visa card. MasterCard has a similar history and it came into being after a name change of the Everything card which was called so by the City Bank of New York. The initial concept of the credit card was that it was a piece of plastic carried for convenience as consumers were saved of the misery of carrying cash with them. The credit side of the card was simply that you were supposed to pay the bill in full when it arrived.

In the 1960’s the credit card truly came into being as the way of getting easy credit and consumers habits had changed forever. This change made sure that you would get the bills on a recurring basis and the numbers of cards in use swelled to unimaginable proportions. The number of credit cards in circulation in 1965 was a mere 5 million and in 1996 it was about 1.4 billion cards and these 1.4 billion cards were pulling in 991 billion dollars in credit card charges for the banks.

This credit card and the way its used today has caused enormous problems of debt and it is an endemic problem within our society with more and more youth succumbing to the lure of easy credit. The comparison with another endemic problem of the society which is consumption of tobacco is bound to happen. Well all is not that bad and it is really the way we treat this debt which is bad. There are always two sides to coin and that goes for the debt, it is both good as well as bad.

Similarly, the credit that you get can be good credit or bad credit and it simply depends on how you manage your finances. The best way to do is to make sure that it happens is to have financial discipline. It is easier said than done. This necessitates a lot of changes in one’s behavior in terms of spending and the controlling of the costs. As an individual it is in your own best interests to start doing financial planning to save you and your family from the debt burden.

This change of habits is not easy as we have long been used to having instant credit and spending more than we can earn or repay. We will have to force this upon ourselves to change our habits. Another thing is to make sure that we have the financial planning and financial discipline incorporated as mandatory educations for our kids. The main aim is not to only bring about financial discipline but to bring about a willingness to change the old habits and start the life a new.