The Card That Changed Everything: 60 Years Ago This Year
Decades before tap-to-pay, Barclaycard was already selling Britain on the idea of shopping without cash.
The Card That Changed Everything — 60 Years Ago This Year
Sixty years ago (29 June 1966) Barclaycard introduced the credit card to the United Kingdom — and nothing about the way we pay has been the same since.
The journey from that first Barclaycard to the tap-and-go world we inhabit today is one of the most consequential — and least told — stories in British financial history.
This archive footage from the Martins Bank Archive that takes you back to where it all began.
What began as a single piece of plastic, accepted at 30,000 retailers and viewed with deep suspicion by much of the British banking establishment, quietly rewired the relationship between consumers, merchants, and money.
Today, cards account for the majority of UK retail spending, digital wallets are processing nearly a third of all card transactions, and the infrastructure built on the back of that 1966 launch underpins a payments ecosystem worth trillions of pounds a year.
Here’s how the Martins Bank Archive describes the advert for Barclaycard which helps you buy “almost anything”.
“This advert represents a strange “first” in British bank advertising history - although desperate to express their individuality and advertise on TV, British banks were tied by a gentleman’s agreement to only issue bland joint statements on policy.
In 1966 Barclays were able to break the agreement in a rather ingenious way. They advertised Barclaycard, a subsidiary company product, in Scotland, for customers of the British Linen Bank, another Barclays subsidiary company!”
With support from the Barclays Group Archives, and the Lloyds Banking Group Archives, the custodians of Martins Bank’s archives present the British Linen Bank Barclaycard Advert, not seen for decades.
