The history of credit cards goes back further than you might think -- here's the origin story of this tech and some predictions about what their future holds. Cynthia Paez Bowman Contributor Cynthia ...

Credit cards have a long history, evolving from ancient IOUs to modern digital payments. The first charge cards emerged in the 1930s and 1940s, paving the way for wider adoption. Key innovations in ...

Credit cards are such a ubiquitous part of our daily financial life, it's hard to imagine a time before they existed. Today, there are more than 1 billion credit cards in the U.S., and about 70% of ...

The Points Guy has been reporting on credit cards since 2010, helping you maximize purchases for future travel. But points and miles are a relatively new offering in the grand scheme of the history of ...

Although we may not think of credit cards as a gender equality issue today, it wasn’t until 1974 that women were allowed to apply for and own a credit card in their name. In this article, we’ll take a ...

Credit risk assessment is largely a job for credit score algorithms, mass market models and systems that are relatively new in terms of the modern credit industry’s lifespan. The FICO score, for ...

There are online murmurs growing lately about the fairness of credit scores and consumer credit reporting. It’s a heated issue: This semi-hidden number can define a person’s life, but few people ...

Toni is a points and miles enthusiast who has been leveraging loyalty programs to travel around the world (for nearly free) with her husband and their four young children. She’s passionate about ...

It was status and convenience in two breezy words: Charge it. But in these leaner times, shoppers are thinking twice before pulling out the plastic, even as analysts predict credit-card defaults could ...