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$5.00 a card, plus 15% of what it holds.

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07 LONG · Department

Where paying strangers came from

The history and ideas behind paying at a distance: charge plates, receipts, money orders, checkboxes and counterfeits.

Journal cover with a small embossed metal plate beside a card outline and a department store awning
Long reads 5 min read

The first charge plates: metal tags, department stores and the idea of a card

Long before plastic, shoppers carried small metal tags and coins that told a store clerk who they were and that they could buy on account. The history of those charge plates explains a surprising amount about the card in your wallet. Here is the story, told carefully.
Journal cover with a sales slip, a magnetic stripe and a chip drawn in a row, joined by a red line
Long reads 5 min read

From carbon copies to chips: how card payments were made safer, one fix at a time

Card security did not arrive in one invention. It grew in layers, each added after criminals found a way around the last: printed lists of bad numbers, magnetic stripes, phone authorizations, chips, one-time codes. Here is that history, one fix at a time.