Credit card

Credit card device used to obtain consumer credit at the time of purchasing an article or service. Credit cards may be issued by a business, such as a department store or an oil company, to make it easier for consumers to buy their products. Alternatively credit cards may be issued by third parties, such as a bank or a financial services company, and used by consumers to purchase goods and services from other companies. There are two types of cards—credit cards and charge cards. Credit cards such as Visa and MasterCard allow the consumer to pay a monthly minimum on their purchases with an interest charge on the unpaid balance. Charge cards, such as American Express, require the consumer to pay for all purchases at the end of the billing period. Consumers may also use bank cards to obtain short-term personal loans (including "cash advances" through automated teller machines). Credit card issuers receive revenue from fees paid by stores that accept their cards and by consumers that use the cards, and from interest charged consumers on unpaid balances.

Diners Club became the first credit card company in 1950, when it issued a card allowing members to charge meals at 27 New York City restaurants. In 1958, Bank of America issued the BankAmericard (now Visa), the first bank credit card. In 1965, only 5 million cards were in circulation; by 1996, U.S. consumers had nearly 1.4 billion cards, which they used to charge $991 billion in goods annually.

However, a bank is usually responsible to its depositor for paying forged checks. All local checks accepted by a bank are turned over daily to a clearinghouse, which cancels checks due from and to all banks of a given neighborhood, the balances alone being paid in cash. Banks settle out-of-town checking claims by means of entries made in the books of the appropriate Federal Reserve banks.

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Equity

Equity principles of justice originally developed by the English chancellor. In Anglo-American jurisprudence equitable principles and remedies are distinguished from the older system that the common law courts evolved. One of the earliest functions of the king's chaplain (the chancellor) and of the chancery (the office that he headed) was to govern access to the royal courts by issuing on application the appropriate original writ. At first the chancellor had great discretion in framing writs, but in time he was limited to a few rigidly circumscribed forms, and in certain cases worthy claims could not be satisfied.

From this inadequacy arose the practice of appealing directly for aid to the chancellor as the "keeper of the king's conscience." By the early 16th cent. a fairly well-defined jurisdiction was exercised by the court of chancery in rivalry with the common law. In the 17th cent. it was definitely established that the court of chancery would decide any claim to jurisdiction that the courts of common law disputed. The early chancellors purported to dispense equity in its original sense of fair dealing, and they cut through the technicalities of common law to give just treatment. Some of their principles were derived from Roman law and from canon law.

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