In September 1958, Bank of America mailed cards to 65,000 residents of Fresno, California. Issued as the first payment card without any supporting infrastructure, it produced a dismal result within a year, a 22% delinquency rate and $20 million in losses. Building the electronic settlement system took 15 years, and the debit card took 17 years to arrive, while Visa’s path to becoming the global standard took 20 years in total. The debit card, which first appeared in 1975, became a core instrument of the primary bank account only in the 1990s, once salary deposits spread in earnest. Today’s crypto card, by contrast, ... (full story)