<story><title>How credit cards make money</title><url>https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/how-credit-cards-make-money/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>teej</author><text>&amp;gt; It’s often forgotten, but prior to credit cards, many Main Street retailers like e.g. pharmacies maintained hundreds or thousands of credit accounts for customers individually, necessitating their own back offices, accounting, and collections headache.&lt;p&gt;This article is a great history of how the modern credit card came into being &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;lifestyle&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;1994&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;the-day-the-credit-card-was-born&amp;#x2F;d42da27b-0437-4a67-b753-bf9b440ad6dc&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;lifestyle&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;19...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>conductr</author><text>My great grandfather owned a grocery store in our town somewhere around 1940s-1970s (the only one at the time). Town was much smaller then but about 200,000 people now (edit: I looked it up, it went from about 10K people to 200K since 1940). My last name is somewhat unique in spelling and it was called &amp;quot;$LASTNAME Grocery&amp;quot; so I still occasionally* get a random old timer that asks me if I&amp;#x27;m related to him. When I say yes, they always respond similar &amp;quot;Great man. A lot of people would have starved if he didn&amp;#x27;t offer credit.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a particularly interesting twist to the story that I really always enjoyed. When the person I&amp;#x27;m talking to is a POC, typically black, they always also mention that he was the only person in town that gave their family credit for anything. This is small town Texas, still very conservative and still above 75% white as is&amp;#x2F;was my family.&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the tangent but the discussion made me think of this mildly interesting story.&lt;p&gt;* Has dwindled quite a lot in last decade or so. Because of the time, those folks that remember the store are losing numbers (but also I haven&amp;#x27;t lived there in a while either)</text></comment>
<story><title>How credit cards make money</title><url>https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/how-credit-cards-make-money/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>teej</author><text>&amp;gt; It’s often forgotten, but prior to credit cards, many Main Street retailers like e.g. pharmacies maintained hundreds or thousands of credit accounts for customers individually, necessitating their own back offices, accounting, and collections headache.&lt;p&gt;This article is a great history of how the modern credit card came into being &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;lifestyle&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;1994&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;the-day-the-credit-card-was-born&amp;#x2F;d42da27b-0437-4a67-b753-bf9b440ad6dc&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;lifestyle&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;19...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>amichal</author><text>Our local small town cafe did this up until COVID... via a big three ring binder. You could run either a credit or debt as long as it was close and a couple of families i know would do this so their kids could stop and get snacks without cash.</text></comment>