The Universal Card
Diners Club began on 8 February 1950 with four people, twenty-seven restaurants, and about two hundred members drawn from the founders' friends and acquaintances. By the end of that year there were twenty thousand, and by the end of the next, forty-two thousand. Seven per cent from the merchant, an annual fee from the member — the start of taking a little from both sides. The membership fee, though, was free at first. That did not grow it. They raised it to three dollars, then to five, and only then did it take off. The paradox that free is not always the fastest road to adoption was found first, by this model. The company today sits under Discover.
The myth, corrected
The credit card was born out of the embarrassment of forgetting a wallet
The «First Supper» founding story was denied most forcefully by Matty Simmons, one of the co-founders, who later admitted it was made up for publicity. Lunch or dinner, whether a wife brought the money or it was borrowed — the details differ every time it is told. The official site still carries the story.