Discover Card
 |
|
| Industry | Financial services |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1985 |
| Founder | Sears |
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Area served
|
United States (primary) |
| Parent |
Dean Witter Reynolds (1985–1997) Morgan Stanley (1997–2007) Discover Financial (2007–present) |
| Divisions | Discover Bank |
| Website | discover |
The Discover Card is a credit card, issued primarily in the United States. It was introduced by Sears in 1985. When launched, the Discover Card charged no annual fee and offered a higher-than-normal credit limit, features that were disruptive to the existing credit card industry. A subsequent innovation was "cash back bonuses" on purchases.
Most cards with the Discover brand are issued by Discover Bank, formerly the Greenwood Trust Company. Discover Card transactions are processed through the Discover Network payment network. In February 2006, the company announced that it would begin offering Discover Debit cards to banks, made possible by the Pulse payment system, which Discover acquired in 2005.
Discover Card is the fourth largest credit card brand in the U.S., behind Visa, MasterCard and American Express, with nearly 44 million cardholders.
At the time the Discover Card was introduced, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. It had purchased the Dean Witter Reynolds brokerage organization and Coldwell, Banker & Company (real estate) in 1981 as an attempt to add financial services to its portfolio of customer services. Ray Kennedy, Sr, father of country singer Ray Kennedy and the credit manager for Sears, conceived the card. Together with the Discover Card (and its issuing bank, the Greenwood Trust Company, owned by Sears), this was named the Sears Financial Network. Early Discover Cards bore a small embossed symbol representing the Sears Tower, then the company's headquarters.
Discover was part of Dean Witter, and then Morgan Stanley, until 2007, when Discover Financial Services became an independent company.Novus was once the major processing center that partnered with the company. The Novus logo was retired, replaced by the Discover Network logo.
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Wikipedia