Word: mastercard
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...pounding it down, the body national is being rejuvenated with a relentless impatience, slimmed with a fanatic dedication. On jogging tracks, in diet clinics and health restaurants and on the operating tables of plastic surgeons, a wholesale attempt to transform the body is avidly purchased with VISA and MasterCard...
Citibank is already preparing for nationwide banking. It has put its VISA and MasterCard into the pockets of 5 million customers throughout the U.S. and is moving its credit-card operation to Sioux Falls, S. Dak., where it is free from any restrictions on what interest rate it can charge. Regional banks, such as North Carolina National, and Citizens & Southern in Atlanta, also want the right to expand across state boundaries and are promoting a law that would permit them to do banking in nearby states...
Then came the Carter Administration's credit squeeze in March. Many people simply stopped using their cards, and some people even sent them to the White House as a symbol of swearing off demon plastic. MasterCard use fell 8.4% during the first quarter of the year, and from March to July Americans decreased their consumer debt by about $6 billion...
Seven months ago, Russell Hogg (rhymes with vogue), 50, became president of MasterCard, and set out to take back leadership in bank credit cards. A craggy onetime FBI agent with executive experience at American Express and American Airlines, Hogg promptly fired eight top officials and laid plans for a host of new products. The debit card is soon to be followed by a Japanese MasterCard and traveler's checks...
...MasterCard will have to struggle. Five years ago, Visa introduced the first debit card, and last November it branched into traveler's checks. The checks have gained ground rapidly against the long-dominant American Express, partly because of the prominence of the Visa name. This year Visa expects to capture more than 10% of the market worldwide. Moreover, many bankers and merchants think that while MasterCard may carry clout, as its ads used to proclaim, Visa carries class. The name Visa seems to spell easy access, a door-opener around the world. Says one New York banker: "MasterCard...