— Ch. 1 · Origins And Formation —
Mastercard.
~5 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
In 1966, Karl H. Hinke, an executive vice president at Marine Midland Bank, asked representatives of several other banks to meet him in Buffalo, New York. This meeting resulted in the formation of Interbankard, Inc., which later became the Interbank Card Association. The alliance was a direct response to BankAmericard, issued by Bank of America, which had begun turning a profit by May 1961 after a disastrous debut in September 1958. Bank of America deliberately kept its profitability secret until 1966 to ward off competition. By 1967, the new association had 150 members, and Hinke served as chairman. Regional bankcard associations allowed unit banks to overcome state laws that limited branch banking operations. These laws prevented small banks from operating across multiple locations, forcing them to remain tiny. Joining forces enabled these banks to aggregate customer bases and merchant networks, making credit cards useful beyond a small radius around their issuing banks.
Evolution Of Branding
The original Interbank branding in 1966 consisted only of a small unobtrusive lowercase i inside a circle in the lower right-hand corner of each card. This design proved entirely unsatisfactory for creating nationwide brand awareness against the established leader, BankAmericard. In 1969, Interbank developed a new national brand called Master Charge: The Interbank Card. They combined two overlapping yellow and orange circles from the Western States Bankcard Association with the name coined by the First National Bank of Louisville, Kentucky. That same year, First National City Bank joined Interbank and merged its Everything Card program with Master Charge. In 1979, Master Charge: The Interbank Card was renamed MasterCard. Beginning in 1980, the company rolled out new cards with a refreshed logo featuring overlapping red and yellow circles first adopted in 1969. In mid-2006, MasterCard International changed its name to MasterCard Worldwide to suggest a more global scale. In July 2016, Mastercard introduced a new rebranding that changed the service name from MasterCard to mastercard. By January 2019, Mastercard removed its name from its logo, leaving just the overlapping discs.