History

The Origins of the Credit Card Trace Back to a Flatbush Bank

Sure, Manhattan has Wall Street and the Stock Exchange. But did you know that the bank card — the bulkier predecessor to the ubiquitous credit card — was born in Brooklyn?

Illustration of First National Bank of Chicago, 1883, via the Office Museum. Photo via Bankrate

by Hannah Frishberg

03/24/2016 2 minute 0

Everything ends up here eventually, but Made in Brooklyn is a column exploring native, born-and-bred borough creations.

Sure, Manhattan has Wall Street and the Stock Exchange. But did you know that the bank card — the bulkier predecessor to the ubiquitous credit card — was born in Brooklyn?

The bank card’s origins can be traced to the Flatbush National Bank of Brooklyn where, in 1946, bank president John Biggins created the “Charg-It” program, which served as an intermediary between Biggins’s bank and Flatbush National’s account holders, who were billed only after merchants deposited sales slips for a purchase, according to MasterCard.

bank credit card Brooklyn — 830 Flatbush Avenue, the address of the former Flatbush National Bank of Brooklyn, where the bank card was invented. Photo by Nicholas Strini for PropertyShark

Little information is available regarding the bank, which the Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s archives reveal to have been formerly located at 830 Flatbush Avenue on the corner of Linden Boulevard. Today, the site is the location of a furniture and appliances shop called The Fulton Stores that would appear to be occupying what was originally two separate buildings.

In 1951, just five years after the invention of the bank credit card, another New York institution, the Franklin National Bank, created the first bank credit card.

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