In 1946, bank president John Biggins created the “Charg-It” program, which served as an intermediary between Biggins’s bank and Flatbush National’s account holders. The way it worked was that merchants could deposit sales slips into the bank and the bank billed the customer who used the card.
Thus was the first known third-party charge card. It spawned imitators around the country, most of which were flops because there weren’t enough customer. In 1952, Franklyn National Bank, issued the first ever general-purpose credit card which was widely accepted by the local merchants.
Invention of payment card by Flatbush National Bank
