Читать книгу Global Experience Industries - Jens Christensen - Страница 43

Around 1960, American Express and Hilton Hotel Corporation launched the world’s first electronic payment cards.⁷⁵ It took a decade, before the American banks engaged in electronic cards when Visa and Master Card were introduced.⁷⁶ Even today, Visa, Master Card and American Express are the most widely used electronic payment cards. With payment cards, one no longer depends on travels checks. Since the 1960s and 1970s, Americans spread the use of electronic cards throughout the world, much supported by its leading airlines and hotel chains. The Europeans did not adopt electronic cards until the 1980s, but until the 1990s, electronic cards were mainly used by business travellers. In addition to travel use, electronic cards were being gradually used in shopping stores. It was the spread of the computer and communication technologies that opened the road to electronic cards, because electronic systems require the quick transferring of payment information between airlines, hotels, and banks, including authorisation of cards and services in relation to lost and stolen cards, etc.

Currently, Visa and Master Card are internationally the most used electronic payment cards, followed by American Express. They are all separate companies of their own. VISA is a partnership of more than 20,000 financial businesses, 20 million companies and 1 billion users around the world.⁷⁷ VISA originated from Bank of America and was turned into an independent company in the 1970s. Globally, VISA had its real breakthrough in the 1990s. In 2007, VISA had revenues of some $20 billion and is used in about 200 countries.

Master Card is the other large international electronic payment card.⁷⁸ Like Visa, it derived from the American banking sector, and has about the same global extension as Visa. American Express started in the 19^th century as a company for money transfers.⁷⁹ Since the 1960s and 1970s, American Express developed its electronic payment business along with its travel activities. Addressing particularly well-off people, American Express is less used than the other two cards.

Few countries include an all-encompassing national card system such as Denmark’s Dankort.⁸⁰ A Country with a population of 5.5 million people has 3.5 million cards, of which one-third is combined with VISA or another international payment card. The use of electronic cards in Denmark accelerated in the 1990s and today, it is the most common form of direct payment. The Dankort company is owned by the Danish banks.