Credit cards were invented by retailers. “In the beginning, this was just done as a bookkeeping thing,” said Bill Maurer, a professor of anthropology and law at the University of California, Irvine. “You know, in a notebook, behind the counter, essentially.” … “Retailers and merchants really sought a way to get customers to keep coming back to their shop instead of going to their competitors to the point where some merchants almost functioned like bankers,” Maurer said.

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