Word: creditably
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Some 1,800 bankers gathered last week at the annual National Instalment Credit Conference in Chicago searching for new prescriptions to satisfy the U.S. consumer's insatiable craving for credit. During the past decade, personal income has increased 69% to $354 billion, but consumer credit has bolted 201% to $43 billion. New installment loans in January hit an alltime peak of $3.8 billion...
...Instant Money." Every day banks are sprouting new gimmicks to lure credit customers. Taking a cue from the successful Diners' Club (TIME, Sept. 22), some 200 banks have shuffled themselves into the credit-card game. Last week Georgia's ten hard-selling Citizens & Southern National Banks popped out the latest variation, advertised "Instant MONEY-Cash Loans Within 20 Seconds." The C. & S. device is a charge card that enables one to draw immediate cash up to thousands of dollars from any C. & S. teller's window, or to charge consumer goods at 1,000 Georgia stores...
Banks have found the credit card a sure-fire way to drum up credit business (instead of taking a one-shot loan, the cardholder becomes a permanent credit customer). In the typical system used by Chase Manhattan Bank, the stores pay a fee of 6% or less on charge-card business, depending on volume. Cardholders get the service free if they pay their monthly bills on time; or they can pay in five monthly installments, with a 1% monthly charge on the unpaid balance...
Last week Manhattan's Bankers Trust Co., seventh biggest in the U.S., launched a plan to give customers frequent loans without bothering to make loan applications. The system, adopted so far by some 20 major banks: the customer gets a line of credit, usually from $100 to $6,000, that goes into his checking account. He then writes checks, pays back in twelve or more monthly installments, is charged 1% or more monthly interest on the outstanding balance...
This idea, called revolving credit or check credit, was pioneered by Boston's First National Bank in 1955. Last week its Vice President Harold B. Hassinger told the Chicago meeting that profits from the plan not only run 50% higher than on personal loans, but that it has helped boost personal loan business 40% by popularizing credit. Said Hassinger: "Don't be surprised if this plan does ultimately displace most everything but the open charge account with the grocer and other retail outlets...