IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buhirw/v92y2018i03p509-533_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Ascent of Plastic Money: International Adoption of the Bank Credit Card, 1950–1975

Author

Listed:
  • Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo
  • Del Angel, Gustavo A.

Abstract

This article studies the genesis and early international expansion of the bank-issued credit card—an American innovation that quickly took hold in western Europe. Empirical evidence undermines the proposition of a single firm building a proprietary network. In fact, it was a constellation of participants that combined three characteristics, namely, a critical mass of both retail customers and retail merchants; the capacity to implement new technological solutions; and the ability to forge resilient collaborations across national borders. The evidence supports the value of collaboration in retail financial services as means of appropriating network externalities. Moreover, other conceptual and empirical studies, especially those based on two-sided markets, neglect the greater implications that initial conditions in this industry have on long-term success.

Suggested Citation

  • Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo & Del Angel, Gustavo A., 2018. "The Ascent of Plastic Money: International Adoption of the Bank Credit Card, 1950–1975," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(3), pages 509-533, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buhirw:v:92:y:2018:i:03:p:509-533_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0007680518000752/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maixe-Altes, J. Carles, 2020. "Reliability and security at the dawn of electronic bank transfers in the 1970s-1980s," MPRA Paper 103783, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Sep 2020.
    2. Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo & Martínez-Rodríguez, Susana, 2022. "Gender and the financialization of Spanish retail banking, 1949-1970," MPRA Paper 114629, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:buhirw:v:92:y:2018:i:03:p:509-533_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/bhr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.