42,000 members signed up in the first year, and by 1959, Diners Club had one million cardholders and a listing on the NYSE. It expanded internationally to the UK, Canada and Mexico, then the rest of Europe and Asia, and by the early 1960s was knocking on the door of Malaya. Veracity aside, Diners Club became phenomenally popular among businessmen who didn’t like to carry cash, or desired simplified accounting for tax purposes. Matty Simmons (Diners Club’s VP of Marketing) later admitted he invented the whole story as part of the brand’s mythos, but it’s still plastered across the Diners Club website as gospel. In some versions, McNamara leaves his signed business card as a promise to pay on the next visit, in others, McNamara isn’t even the cashless businessman in question. Like any good legend, it changes slightly every time someone tells it.
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The origins tale, though interesting, is probably apocryphal. One year later, he returned to Major’s Cabin and paid for his meal with a small cardboard card, an event hailed as the “first supper”. McNamara stalled for time, all the while vowing in his heart that this sort of thing should never happen again. To avoid the embarrassment of being thought a deadbeat, his wife had to drive over with cash from Long Island (still with curlers in her hair, some sources report), an hour’s long journey on a good night. The official story goes that in 1949, businessman Frank McNamara forgot his wallet while entertaining a client at Major’s Cabin Grill, a swanky restaurant in New York City. Visa (called BankAmericard at the time) introduced the first credit card in 1958.
RICHARD SIMMONS DEAL A MEAL PROGRAM CARDS FULL
Credit cards let you roll over the balance, but charge cards require full payment at the end of each month. Technically speaking, the Diners Club card wasn’t actually a credit card it was a charge card. Historians debate the exact origins of the credit card, but it’s generally accepted that Diners Club is responsible for the concept as we know it today.
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Once upon a time, Diners Club was the most exclusive club in all of Singapore, one that top executives and captains of industry aspired to be part of.