The First National City Charge Service, marketed as The Everything Card, was an early
credit card
A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...
introduced by
First National City Bank
Citibank, N. A. (N. A. stands for " National Association") is the primary U.S. banking subsidiary of financial services multinational Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, and later became First National City Ba ...
(now Citibank) in the eastern
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
in 1967. It was intended as a response to the
BankAmericard
Visa Inc. (; stylized as ''VISA'') is an American Multinational corporation, multinational financial services corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. It facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly ...
(today's Visa card), issued by
BankAmerica. Issued under the initiative of National City Bank President
Walter B. Wriston, the card followed the bank's purchase of an interest in the
Carte Blanche
A blank cheque in the literal sense is a cheque that has no monetary value written in, but is already signed. In the figurative sense, it is used to describe a situation in which an agreement has been made that is open-ended or vague, and theref ...
charge card
A charge card is a type of credit card that enables the cardholder to make purchases which are paid for by the card issuer, to whom the cardholder becomes indebted. The cardholder is obligated to repay the debt to the card issuer in full by the ...
.
However, the card proved to be limited by its regional scope, as it was tied to the area surrounding the bank's
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
base of operations. In 1969, the card was absorbed into
Master Charge (now known as MasterCard), another card that had been developed by a
membership association of four banks, the Interbank Card Association, which National City Bank joined.
Citibank, as First National City Bank came to be known in 1976, made a further attempt in 1977 to create a proprietary credit card that was not tied to either Master Charge or Visa. The
Choice card was, like the Everything Card, a regional credit card issued only by Citibank. It also proved unsuccessful, and its cards were reissued as Visa cards in 1987.
References
Citigroup
Credit cards in the United States
Credit card issuer associations
Financial services companies established in 1967
1967 establishments in the United States
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