Word: visas
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...last four weeks, I've gotten applications for seven Visa cards (four of them Gold Cards), five Mastercards, two American Express Cards (one Gold, one regular), a Discover Card, a Sprint Foncard and an offer for a $7,500 loan. This week there was even a Visa Gold application for my mother...
...employee of the Bank of America, invents the first all- purpose credit card in 1956. Several years later at the same bank, Dee Ward Hock devises the computer system that processes charges so credit cards can be used everywhere. What a perfect name for the father of the modern Visa card -- Hock...
...cards. While the AmEx elite shelled out annual fees, Discover clients were issued free cards. Amex users had to pay their bills in full each month; savvy bank-card customers enjoyed revolving credit at modest interest rates. AmEx clients could brandish their cards in 3.7 million upscale establishments worldwide; Visa cards opened 11 million doors, MasterCard 12.3 million. Feeling decidedly underprivileged, 2 million AmEx users cut up their cards between 1991 and 1993 and went in search of better bargains...
...appeal to consumers if they can't use the new cards when and where they want. In recent years, AmEx has been chucked out of establishments by owners who were no longer willing to pay an average fee of 3.2% per purchase (as compared with 2% for Visa and MasterCard). A chastened Amex has now chopped its vendor fee to 2.8%, and the ploy seems to be working. Since 1992, the company has moved boldly into / establishments regarded by consumers as plastic-essential, including -- choke on this, yuppie scum! -- Sears and K Mart. This year alone, AmEx expects to sign...
...Irish Republican Army's political leader, Gerry Adams, appears set to make a second visit to the U.S. this year -- this time as an ambassador of peace. The State Department is preparing a U.S. visa in that event. To play fair, the U.S. is also entertaining a request from a Northern Ireland Unionist delegation to visit Washington. The last time the Clinton Administration gave Adams U.S. entry, in January, the move strained ties between Washington and London...