Credit Card

Credit Card was started to be used from the end of 20th centry. (Don't be scared, not a very long time ago.) Roughly, from early 1980s?

At the begining, the main function of credit card would be counted as a convenient method of payment, a representative way of high class or rich, up to 56 days interest free benefit, safe to carry, etc. Most of the features are still alive today.

There are various kinds of credit cards around. Mainly, they could be classfied as Visa, Master, American Express, Dinners club, JCB(which stands for Japan Card Bureau, if I didn't remmber wrongly)

Each of the these above is an organization of credit card, which is not really a company, esp. for the visa or master as in the first two and the largest two. Most of the banks in the whole world are members of the organization which means that they have the right to issue visa or master cards but they need to share their profit with the organization as well.

In a country like the UK, they issuse millions and millions credit card each year. So, cards play a very important role in the daily consuming.
Here, people call credit card "card", or "plastic card", or even "Plastic". So, when you heard people saying, Can I pay by plastic? Don't be amazed.

In the USA, sometimes, people would say to the waiter in a restaurant, ''Can I charge?", it means they want to pay by card as well.