September 15, 2025

— Clarence Saunders.

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$500 and a prayer

Picture this: You're sitting at your kitchen table in Fresno, California, sipping morning coffee on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday. The mail arrives. Among the bills, you find something unexpected—a piece of plastic with your name embossed across the front, accompanied by a letter explaining that you now possess $300 in instant credit.

No application. No background check. No visit to the bank. Just trust.

This was September 18, 1958, and Joseph P. Williams had just unleashed the most audacious financial experiment in American history.

Williams wasn't a banker—he was a former infantry officer who'd talked his way into Bank of America by driving cross-country and begging legendary founder A.P. Giannini for a job. By the mid-1950s, he was running the bank's think tank, tasked with solving an increasingly obvious problem.

The Problem That Wasn't Supposed to Exist

Middle-class Americans were drowning in paperwork. They carried multiple charge accounts—Sears, Mobil, local department stores. Each came with separate bills, payment dates, and credit policies. It was financial chaos disguised as convenience.

What consumers needed was obvious: one card that worked everywhere. What nobody could figure out was how to make it profitable.

Diners Club and American Express existed, but they were travel cards requiring full payment each month. Small banks had tried general-purpose credit cards but lacked resources to create merchant networks. Every attempt had failed.

Williams studied those failures obsessively. Then he made a crucial insight: the magic wasn't in the card itself, but in creating a three-way system where banks, merchants, and customers all benefited simultaneously. His innovation wasn't technological—it was structural.

The Fresno Test

Williams chose Fresno deliberately. Population: 250,000. Big enough to matter, small enough to control. Bank of America held 45% market share there, and it was isolated—if the experiment failed, damage would be contained.

On September 18, 1958, 60,000 Fresno residents opened their mail to find a BankAmericard with credit limits ranging from $300 to $500.

Williams had secretly enrolled over 300 merchants beforehand. The brilliance was circular: customers received cards that immediately worked everywhere they shopped, while merchants joined a network that instantly included thousands of potential customers.

It was the world's first successful "network effect" in consumer finance.

Disaster and Redemption

For three months, it looked like genius. Then reality struck. Williams had projected a 4% delinquency rate. The actual number? Twenty-two percent. Fraud exploded. Merchants complained about 6% processing fees. Police departments found themselves investigating a new category of crime.

Williams resigned in December 1959. Bank of America lost over $20 million when all costs were included. Critics called it a disaster. Politicians demanded investigations. Williams was devastated—he'd gambled on human nature and lost.

But Bank of America's management looked deeper. Beneath the chaos, they saw something remarkable: the concept worked. Customers loved the convenience. Merchants were making money. The infrastructure was sound—execution just needed refinement.

They imposed strict controls and invested heavily in security. By May 1961, BankAmericard became profitable.

The Revolution Nobody Saw Coming

Bank of America kept profitability secret until 1966. When truth emerged, competitors rushed in. By 1970, the program became Visa. Williams founded Uni-Serve Corporation, bought Chase's failed credit operations for $9 million, then sold to American Express three years later—proving he understood the business better than critics.

Williams had created more than a payment method: a new relationship between Americans and money based on trust and instant credit. Today's Apple Pay and Venmo carry his DNA. The Fresno network effect now processes trillions annually.

The transformation brought costs—consumer debt challenges and financial struggles for millions. Yet Williams solved real problems: small businesses gained customers, families managed emergencies, commerce became efficient.

His insight endures: magic happens when you make it easier for everyone. Customers get convenience, merchants get sales, banks get profits.

Sixty-seven years later, we're still living in the world Joseph Williams built with $20 million, 60,000 pieces of plastic, and almost naive faith in human nature.

Sometimes the most revolutionary changes begin with someone willing to simply trust people with something new.

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7 other things to know this week ...

• Sunday September 14: "In that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?" — Francs Scott Key, who on this date in 1814 wrote the poem that would eventually become the National Anthem of the U.S.
• Monday September 15: “I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world..”— Sergey Brin, who on this day in 1997 originally registered the domain name, Google.com.
• Tuesday September 16: “God works a miracle!.” — William Bradford, Mayflower passenger and later second governor of Massachusetts. On this day in 1620, he and his fellow passengers left England for the New World.
• Wednesday September 17: "A republic, if you can keep it.."— Benjamin Franklin, in reply to a question regarding whether the U.S. created a republic or a dictatorship on this day in 1787, when the Constitution was ratified.
• Thursday September 18: "If you budget carefully and watch your expenditures, you can get by on a couple billion dollars." — Ted Turner, who on this day in 1997 announced plans to give $1 billion to the United Nations.
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• Friday September 19: “You can’t eat your cake and have it too.” — Ted Kaczynski, the Umabomer, in his manifesto, which was published this day in 1995. His odd phrasing was one of the big clues that led to his brother identifying him, and turning him in.
• Saturday September 20: "It would set us back 50 years if I didn't win that match.." —Billie Jean King, then 29, regarding her defeat of 55-year-old Bobby Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 at the Houston Astrodome, on this date in 1973.