Credit card chips have been around for a LONG time.

Credit card chips have been around for a LONG time.

To many, credit card chips are a relatively new fad. However, chip technology has been around since 1986!

It was first used in France, followed shortly after by Germany.

We live in a transactional world – and always have done – with payment for goods and services having taken some interesting shapes over the years. 

The notion of credit as just about as old as those original payment methods, with early economies as far back as the Bronze Age seeing lines of credit extended because, for example the time between planting and harvesting a crop – and harvesting wealth too – was long.

The first recorded credit card of sorts was identified in ancient Mesopotamia, when that civilization’s people used clay tablets to trade with its neighbors. 

While those payment methods are now as much as 5,000 years old, the simple but meaningful act of payment evolved, with the most remarkable innovations having smoothed the paths of commerce at particularly great speed in the last 130 years.