The evolution of the credit card and the debit card have been decidedly different. The credit card began with Diners Club, American Express and Barclaycard decades ago as a delayed payment mechanism and has evolved through banks into Visa and MasterCard today.
The debit card model, however, arose out of the need to provide bank customers with cash at automated teller machines (ATMs). In the UK in the 1980s, for example, it was extended from access to cash to payments at the point of sale (PoS).
