How or why did the credit card spread to the other countries?

Well I think that the concept of a credit card is based on the notion of economy at scale. That is once you set it up the more people you can get in to carry your card, so the more merchants you can get to accept the better it is. In a sense that each additional, the system is expensive to set up initially, but than once you expand you dont add more and more investments, but you actually reaped a lot of benefits from just having a larger market. From the stand point of global multinational credit card companies they want to expand their market globally. It makes sense because the concept is already developed, and all they have to do is sign up more people and more merchants with the same idea and get more money. So, you know this is a simply expanding market and with the fall of the iron curtain, with the fall of communism, there is this big spots of land open up, not only for credit card markets but also for retailers of all kinds. That became very attractive, millions, and counting the Chinese billions of people that have not seen credit cards before and have not seen a lot of different retail products before, different brand. To capture those markets is very attractive for card companies. How does the use of credit cards in America compare to those of other countries? Hows it different in Eastern Europe? Well, I think the American way of using cards is fairly unique, and that there is somewhere a book I looked at some time ago, that they quoted that about 80-85% of Americans carry cards that are issued by banks which they have no other relationship with, meaning you dont keep your money there, you may not even know where that bank is located. The bank simply issued you a credit card. That is very unusual, in other countries like Germany for example, people have cards that allow them to draw from banks that they can draw from their deposits. So, banks that know these people, and have their money there. In the U.S. it is completely disconnected. Most of the time is you ask people which bank issued their card, people may not even be able to tell you, they certainly may not be able to tell you what state it is located to, unless they physical send their bills somewhere and have to write the address on the envelope. What I am saying is that in many other countries that is not how credit cards are issued. They are also used differently, for example Americans use credit cards for a lot of very small purchases all the time, like you buy a dollar fifty bottle of water and I pay credit card with it. In many other context people prefer to pay cash and carry credit cards, or some kind of card that has credit like over draft features or something. (card that is associated with your deposit account but allows you to draw against it, for example you can spend down your account plus have something else of something more) In the U.S. people typically use credit cards for very small purchases. The average household has 4 credit cards. Many carry balances of their credit cards, which means they dont pay for the money they spend each month. They actually carry the debt from month to month. In many other countries people, for example Russia and Ukraine, especially initially when they credit card has just been introduced

people typically use them to pay for high priced items, for which people did not have cash. It was a way for them to borrow. For every other daily needs, they pay with cash. I think what the credit card companies would like us to do, credit cards are not only providing credit for us, but are also a means of convenience. In that science it is a lot more convenient to carry a little plastic thing than cash. You may not have enough cash at the time, expesolly when you travel because than you have to keep changing currency. Credit card companies evaluate themselves by how they can displace cash. How long did it take the credit card to come for the United States to be used in other countries? Even during the cold war, so when the Soviet Union was still apart, they places in the Soviet Union and eastern countries example where foreign visitors could use their cards. Some stores and high end hotels could accept your cards. Cards were not issued in those countries. The first cards that were issued were probably like in Russia there was a very small issue in 1989, another in 1991. The one in 1991was the first mass issuance, prior to that there were very small numbers of people that they were given to. Member of top group of party officials, and they Soviet athletes going to the 1988 to the Olympic Games in South Korea, and the whole team was given a card. They were very promotional things; they were not really mass programs. Than the first mass program was issued in 1991, I would say that credit cards did not did not become a mass phenomenon in Russia up until maybe 20032005. So it took a good 12-15 years or so. To issue cards on a mass scale, banks have to rely on some sort of mechanism to evaluate people in terms of whether they are good card holders or not. In the U.S. there are credit bearus that collect information of peoples past credit history. If you are applying for card, it easy to see if you have a card before, what you've paid, and your credit score. Decisions are very automated. There hasnt been any official credit bureau or way of accumulating information of that kind in Russia till 20042005. The law regulating credit bureaus institutions wasnt passed until December 2004. 2005 is when you have kind of an emergence of this institution. So really cards were issued, but based on very shaky grounds. Certainly not in the way they have been issued in the U.S. One way to issue cards in Eastern Europe that was very popular was through employer. People used to receive salaries in cash, and at some point banks started to sign agreements with large employers, plants, factories, research institutes, and colleges, to have salaries directly deposited to the bank and people would get ATM cards essentially. Eventually they could be over drafted. For example if you have your salary deposited to a specific back, you can then spend down your salary plus another 17% of that on top of it. That was basically the way to mass issue cards all across the region including China. What parts of the world havent seen much credit use before?

I would say Africa, parts of Asia, and Latin America. I think the current Chilean President made his money on retail credit card programs. He is a very wealthy man who became wealthy because he was successful with that credit program in Chile. Is there anything else that you think would help with our project? A credit card is two projects lumped in one. On one hand it is a payment card, its basically a piece of plastic that takes place of cash. On the other hand, it is access to a personal line of credit. So, you can have payment cards without credit, ATM cards, and debit card. That is another interesting thing, in the west historically, the credit cards were first. American Express, Diners, and Visa (Bank America Cards in 1958), all of these cards are credit cards, in part because to be debit cards they needed technology that wasnt part back then. Debit cards came later. In the rest of the world cards as products were introduced much later, 1980s, 1990s. Debit cards are actually more popular. They dont allow people to charge against banks money. They are linked to the account, as people have their own money. At this point, in the U.S. rather than globally I think the growth of credit cards is much faster. The growth rate is Russia maybe 5-7%, Czech Republic and Hungary maybe 15-20%. You may think that the most common cards brand in America is Visa. The most common card brand is called Union Pay, and that is a Chinese card. In about ten years, I think they started in 2002 so by 2012 they have issued more cards than Visa issued over the fifty years it had been in operation.