Marketing Strategies : A Comparative Study of Credit Cards of ICICI and SBI

1.1 INTRODUCTION A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a means of payment. It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for them, later. The issuer of the card creates a revolving account and grants a line of credit to the consumer (or the user) from which the user can borrow money to pay a merchant or for use as an advance . A credit card is different from a charge card: a charge card requires the balance to be paid in full each month. In contrast, credit cards allow the consumers a continuing balance of debt, subject to interest being charged. A credit card also differs from a cash card, in that it can be used like currency by the owner of the card. Most credit cards are issued by banks or credit unions, and are of the shape and size specified by the ISO/IEC 7810 standard as ID-1. And this is given as 85.60 53.98 mm (33/8 21/8 in) in size. 1.2 HISTORY OF CREDIT CARD The concept of using a card for purchases was delineated in 1887 by Edward Bellamy in his utopian novel Looking Backward. Bellamy used the term credit card eleven times in this novel. The modern credit card was the successor of a variety of merchant