A credit card is a payment card issued to users as a system of payment. It allows the cardholder to pay for goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for them. The issuer of the card creates a revolving account and grants a line of credit to the consumer (or the user) from which the user can borrow money for payment to a merchant or as a cash advance to the user.
A credit card is different from a charge card: a charge card requires the balance to be paid in full each month. In contrast, credit cards allow the consumers a continuing balance of debt, subject to interest being charged. A credit card also differs from a cash card, which can be used like currency by the owner of the card.
The size of most credit cards is 85.60 × 53.98 mm (33/8 × 21/8 in),, conforming to the ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1 standard. Credit cards have an embossed bank card number complying with the ISO/IEC 7812 numbering standard.
Read more about Credit Card: History, How Credit Cards Work, Features, Security Problems and Solutions, Credit History, Profits and Losses, Over Limit Charges, Controversy, Credit Card Numbering, Credit Cards in ATMs, Credit Cards As Funding For Entrepreneurs, Problems
Famous quotes containing the words cards, credit and/or card:
“A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a credit system in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Erma Bombeck (20th century)