• 1950: First credit card charge was made by Frank McNamara, Ralph Schneider and Matty Simmons at Major’s Cabin Grill in New York City
• 1958: American Express issued its first plastic payment card
• 1958: Bank of America launched the BankAmericard, the first modern credit card
• 1959: Option of maintaining revolving balances introduced
• 1966: Group of California banks established Master Charge card to compete with BankAmericard
• 1977: American Express is publicly traded
• 1978: Seattle's First National Bank offered the first debit card to business executives (akin to a check signature or guarantee card, where the bank guaranteed the fund would be paid but one didn’t need a check to complete the transaction)
• 1984: First nationwide debit system created by Landmark
• 1986: Discover Card, originally part of Sears, unveiled
• 2004: Antitrust court ruling against Visa and MasterCard allows banks and other card issuers to provide customers with American Express or Discover cards in addition to Visa and MasterCard
• 2006: MasterCard is publicly traded
• 2007: Discover Financial Services is publicly traded
• 2008: Visa is publicly traded

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1. The United States is the largest non-cash payment market in the world, accounting for 39% of the global non-cash market with 99 billion transactions in 2007. [1]
2. In the last 15 years, there have only been two years when the average credit card debt per household contracted - 2003 and 1998. [2]  
3. Debit cards have achieved a growing share of purchase transactions in the United States, from 22.9% in 1998 to 57.5% in 2008. [3]
4. As of 2008, there are 1.125 billion general purpose payment cards in circulation in the United States, which accounted for $3.687 trillion in purchase volume on 53.48 billion transactions. [4]
5. The average number of credit cards per person is 2.9. [5]
6. Nearly 1 in every 3 consumer purchases in the United States is made with a payment card-including credit, debit, and prepaid products.[6]

[1] Capgemini, "Worldwide Payments Report 2009" (2009).

[2] The Nilson Report, Issue 921 (March 2009).

[3] The Nilson Report, Issue 924 (April 2009).

[4] The Nilson Report, Issue 924 (April 2009).

[5] Gallup Poll (May 2006). http://www.gallup.com/poll/22879/Credit-Card-Owners-Average-Balance-More-Than-3000.aspx

[6] Visa USA, "Merchant Benefits: Useful Facts." http://usa.visa.com/merchants/new_acceptance/benefits/index.html