History and Evolution
The Backbone
1918: Electric money is first born.
The federal Reserve first moved currency via telegraph
​
1946: The first bank card
John Biggins, a banker from Brooklyn introduced the first bank card.
​
1968: First Networked ATM
The first networked ATM was pioneered in the US, Dallas by Donald Wetzel
​
1978: First Debit Card is issued
​
1979: First Credit Card terminal is introduced
​
​
The Evolution
The first online payments take place
1994: First online banking service introduced
The Stanford Federal Credit Union introduced online banking services. E-money, Tokens or Digital cash are used to transact.
​
1999: Paypal was developed
Paypal developed an online money transfer service in 1999. Allowing online payments to be made using email addresses, mobile payment apps and HTML payment buttons.
New Technology
Digital payment companies become major players
2003: NFC is developed
Near Field Communication (NFC) is an electromagnetic wireless technology that was desinged to enable communcations between two devices
​
2007: First Digital Wallet
M-Pesa created the first mobile payment systems
​
2009: First Digital currency
Bitcoin was the first digital currency to be created which uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions
​
2014: Launch of Apple Pay
Apple Pay enabled payment cards to be added to mobile phones.
