Posterity and credit cards for college students
If preserving posterity is not sufficient motivation, the Smithsonian Discover card also appeals to economic self-interest: "Ben Franklin [said] ‘A penny saved is a penny earned.’ But now a penny spent can earn you free U.S. Savings Bonds . . . Save for your future, and support the Smithsonian . . . because you’ll earn points toward free U.S. Savings Bonds." A $50 Series EE Savings Bond is awarded for charging $5,000. Sounds like a deal, right? But, if you charge $5,000 in a year and average a $1,000 account balance (debt), the $25 present value of the bond will have cost over $200 in finance charges. That is quite a profit for wrapping credit cards for college students interest fees in the patriotic red, white, and blue of America’s national heritage. Ben Franklin would roll over in his grave if he knew his name was being used to encourage Americans to spend rather than frugally manage their budgets in order to "earn" their savings.
By the new millennium, the mass marketing campaigns of the credit cards for college students industry had successfully penetrated virtually all social and economic spheres of American society. Whether signing up national retailers like grocery store chains (Safeway), membership warehouses (Costco), and fast-food restaurants (Popeyes) or integrating corporate vending machines into proprietary credit cards for college students processing systems (1998 Coca-Cola-MasterCard joint advertising campaign), the industry made the ubiquity of consumer credit cards for college students a testament to both technological and marketing innovations. Indeed, the term "bank" credit cards for college students is more accurately labeled "universal" consumer card. What an amazing transformation since Bank of America began marketing the precursor to Visa with its 1974 ad campaign "BankAmericard. Think of it as money." With the introduction of credit cards for college students "courtesy" checks in the early 1990s as well as easy access to cash advances through expanding systems of automated teller machines (brainchild of past Citigroup President John Reed), bank credit cards for college students could be used to purchase anything–legal or illegal.
By Madison Avenue standards, the slogan "Visa–it’s everywhere you want to be" is an understatement in the credit cards for college students Nation. Even so, the argument that consumer credit cards for college students are an inevitable, technological progression of rational, modern society belies the lack of interest and even cultural resistance in other industrialized countries like Japan and in the European Union (EU). As an article on the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, explained, "Cash. The Japanese don’t leave home without it. . . . [According to a 66-year-old merchant,] ‘Young people can figure out how to use credit cards for college students, but not me. I always deal in cash and I’m not going to change. . . . [Another merchant explained,] ‘We did [accept credit cards for college students] for the Olympics, but if possible I’d like to be paid in cash. . . . It’s so strange; I guess Westerners don’t use cash. People who speak English tend to use credit cards for college students.’"