Thomas C . Franklin , “ The Significance of Interchange for Bank Card Plans ,” Burroughs Clearing House ( August 1968 ), 28 .
Geographic coverage of BankAmericard and Interbank in April 1968 .
promotional strategy to secure their card plans before the California colossus came crashing in .
In retrospect , bank network-building strategies appear calm , orderly and rational . Bank of America and its licensees developed a cooperative system with minimal internal competition to extend consumer credit across the country . Competing banks responded by spontaneously organizing regional and national cooperative-competitive platforms , coalescing into the rival interbank network ( Master Charge ). Network expansion enabled bankers to offer travel services , generating system volume by combining a market previously divided by gender , even as cards remained privileged products for creditworthy , white Americans .
Network building , however , facilitated a competitive process that was anything but well-ordered . The multiplication of bank card plans begins to suggest the scale . At the end of 1965 , 68 banks operated credit card plans , and few competed against other banks . Four years later , 1,207 banks operated card plans , all competing for shares of local and regional markets . These figures include only card-issuing banks , not the agent banks that signed up merchants and solicited consumers . By April 1970 , more than half of all commercial banks — 7,810 out of slightly less than 14,200 — had affiliated with either Bank- Americard or Interbank . The networks claimed 450,000 merchant participants each and almost 60 million cardholders altogether .
Facing breakneck expansion , commercial bankers were seized by excitement and fear , expectation and doubt . Bankers saw cards as their road to a profitable , technologically modern , consumerfocused future . They believed transaction volume was the key to card profitability . They aggressively built network infrastructure and recruited consumers to secure it . Mapped from above , the drama looked like a sweeping military campaign . BankAmericard licensees fought to command new markets . Regional cooperatives sprang up to resist them . As Bankers Monthly explained , “ When BankAmericard started its franchising program , banks that did not sign up for this plan hurried to get their own cards as a competitive counter weapon .”
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