Bankcard was the first widely used credit card in Australia and at its height had five million users.
Bankcard was launched in 1974 and before that the only payment cards that were available in Australia were a couple of store cards, Diners Card and American Express, which were charge cards. Charge cards are not like credit cards as the balance has to be settled every month. As these cards are aimed mainly at business travellers then their ability was limited by the fact that they were only really accepted in a number of expensive restaurants, hotels and airports. Store cards tended to be limited to the store in which they were issued.
Because Australia is so large, it was seen to be very expensive to launch a credit card there, as the distribution costs were a large part of the early setup costs of credit card operations. This meant that no single bank was prepared to set up a credit card in Australia.
In the early 1970s a number of banks decided to act together and applied for a licence to offer a credit card, which they obtained in 1972. In 1974 Bankcard was launched by the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. As part of the campaign there was an enormous marketing effort that involved the largest direct mail shot that Australia had ever seen, and that still has not been matched.
This direct mail campaign also involved sending many people pre-approved cards with a $300 credit limit, as it was seen that there would be some resistance to the cards at first. By the end of this campaign there were more than a million people with a Bankcard.
The Bankcard was operated by separate and competing banks. They branded the card, set the credit limits and set their interest rates. As for much of the 1970s and 1980s the Bankcard was by far the largest card operator in Australia it quickly grew, getting as many as five million card holders.
There were problems for Bankcard. Foreign operators, particularly Visa and MasterCard, started to get involved in the credit card market and offered their own credit cards, at first through credit unions and smaller banks. Bankcard was also very rarely accepted outside Australia and New Zealand.
Gradually banks started dropping Bankcard, until in 2006 only the National Australian Bank was offering the card, although a number of banks still had legacy accounts for customers who had previously taken up Bankcard. It was then announced that Bankcard would be withdrawn by the end of the year. On 31 December 2006 the last Bankcard transaction was made and Bankcard closed down its operations.
