[electronic beeping, buzzing]
[indistinct chatter]
One hundred and seventy million.
[speaks Chinese]
[narrator] It's April 2014,
and at a Hong Kong auction,
billionaire art collector Liu Yiqian is bidding
on a rare Ming Dynasty porcelain cup.
Fair warning… Sold!
[narrator] Liu's bid wins.
This chicken cup has broken the world record for Chinese art.
It has fetched 36 million US dollars.
[narrator] And how's he paying for it?
With his American Express Centurion card,
an exclusive card for the superrich.
Today,
we live on borrowed money.
Credit is a way of life.
There are half a billion credit cards in the US alone.
That's an average of two for every American adult.
And around the globe,
there are about 470 billion card transactions a year.
That's more than the number of stars in the Milky Way.
Total credit-card debt in the United States in 2020
is $820 billion.
If that was laid out end to end in one-dollar bills,
it would measure almost the distance from Earth to the Sun.
This tiny, humble piece of plastic has changed the global economy
and the way we live forever.
But more than that,
credit cards might be rewiring our brains, getting us more addicted to spending.
So is the credit card our flexible friend?
Or are we its servant?
[eerie music playing]
-[static crackles] -[crowd cheering]
At the end of World War II,
the United States is the world's greatest military power…
and the richest nation in history.
The economy booms as factories pivot from a wartime footing
to churning out consumer goods.
Never before
have ordinary people been given the chance to buy such unheard-of luxuries.
♪ A brand-new sink, a built-in oven ♪
♪ A new refrigerator and a phone ♪
♪ A kitchen phone, a bright red phone ♪
[narrator] But buying that fancy kitchen gadget or car
straight from the showroom is expensive,
and that means many of the new goods are out of reach for ordinary people.
After all,
Americans who grew up during the Great Depression
know the value of pinching their pennies.
[car horns beep]
That all changes in New York in 1950.
Businessman Frank McNamara has an embarrassing night out
at a Manhattan restaurant where he forgets his wallet.
The next time he visits, he brings a cardboard card
that promises payment but at a later date.
He calls it a Diners Club Card.
In other words,
"Buy what you want now, but pay for it later."
It turns out a lot of people like the sound of that.
[keys clack]
In its first year of operation,
42,000 people subscribe to McNamara's credit card,
and the company rushes to enlist the cooperation of rental-car companies…
Hello?
…hotels and restaurants.
[man] A booklet is provided with the card
listing the cooperating establishments where they will be honored.
Many of the cooperating establishments are in the high-priced luxury category.
[narrator] Diners Club actually works as a charge card.
It makes money by charging an annual membership fee
and getting a small commission on each transaction
from participating stores and restaurants.
It shows the banks
there's money to be made in these newfangled cards.
So how can they persuade the rest of us that we want one?
A senior executive at the Bank of America, Joseph P. Williams,
has a bright idea.
In 1958,
Williams signs up merchants in Fresno, California,
to honor his new BankAmericard.
[horn honks]
Then he mails out 60,000 unsolicited cards
to the unsuspecting citizens of Fresno.
[paper rustles]
People love their new cards, and by the end of the following year,
he's sent out two million throughout the state.
But whoops,
more than one in five people with the new card
never pay back what they owe.
The bank loses nearly $9 million,
and Williams resigns.
[thud]
And yet people are starting to use such cards.
That same year,
US financial giant American Express
issues 250,000 charge cards.
And BankAmericard?
Losing that $9 million was a blip.
It's soon recognized as the first all-purpose credit card
and is later renamed Visa.
Of course, as credit cards take off, there's a catch.
Fail to pay your bill in full at the end of the month,
and you'll be charged interest on what's owed.
And that can get very expensive.
Today, the US average annual interest rate paid for credit cards
is almost 16%.
Let's say you use your card to buy a used car for $10,000
but only pay the minimum of $150 each month.
You'll end up paying over $14,000 in interest
on top of the $10,000 you owe for the car.
For that extra $14,000,
you could have bought
a second used car
plus a week-long cruise around the Caribbean
and an electric bike
and a three-month Eurorail pass
and still have enough to attend 25 games of the Boston Red Sox.
[bat clinks]
[cheering and applause]
Perhaps that's why banks are so eager to get people hooked on credit cards.
[man] The young and affluent feed the credit-card boom.
Enjoy now, pay later.
Those little plastic rectangles will get you almost anything.
[narrator] But in those early days,
making a credit-card purchase is not for the impatient.
The store clerk has to phone the bank,
which in turn must contact the card issuer before the transaction is approved.
[phone rings]
Better hope they pick up the phone.
The solution comes in the mid-1960s.
IBM engineer Forrest Parry
is trying to figure out a way to produce secure identity cards for…
Wait for it.
…the CIA.
One evening, he comes home with a plastic card
and information encoded on a stripe of magnetic tape.
He'd like to attach one to the other, but how to do it?
It's his wife, Dorothea, who comes up with the idea.
She's ironing at the time and hands him the iron.
"Try this."
The combination of heat and pressure from the iron
seals the magnetic stripe onto the plastic card.
From then on,
the credit card is made in exactly the same way as a secret agent's ID.
The financial details of the credit-card owner
are electronically stored on the magnetic stripe.
Swipe the card through a reader,
a magnetic head inside the reader detects the magnetic field the stripe generates,
relays it back to the bank's central computer,
and the sale is complete.
Still, credit cards are mainly used in the US.
That's all about to change.
[jazz music playing]
It's Swinging London, 1966.
Just like the Americans,
the Brits find there's lots of shiny new things to buy.
[man] Designer Mary Quant is just one of the breakaway generation
who has now dreamed up a revolutionary approach
to young cosmetics,
which even department stores like Selfridges have taken up.
[narrator] In Britain,
many people still regard personal debt as shameful.
So Barclays Bank sends out over a million Barclaycards,
a licensed version of BankAmericard, to select account holders.
It's pitched as an exclusive offer.
[man] Remember that apart from buying goods and services,
the Barclaycard can also be used to borrow cash
from any branch of Barclays Bank.
[narrator] Marketing the card as a status symbol
is the key that unlocks the door,
changing British attitudes forever.
[disco music playing]
And back in the US,
no one's putting much money away for a rainy day.
By 1979,
Americans are saving just 10% of their disposable income.
It turns out people really like instant gratification.
Perhaps a bit too much.
Studies show that when people pay for high-end goods with a credit card,
they're prepared to pay up to 100% more than with cash.
[metal crunches, glass shatters]
Reportedly,
McDonald's customers spend 55% more when using a credit card.
That's like adding a large fries to your Big Mac
every time you pay with a credit card.
[food squelching]
In the grocery stores,
shoppers using credit cards check out with bigger baskets…
[products clatter]
…and they make more indulgent and impulsive purchases.
[car engine revs]
But by the mid-1980s,
there's no going back.
Diners Club Cards, Amex,
Visa, and MasterCard are honored around the globe.
And many countries now produce their own cards.
Even the Soviet Union gets in on the act
when local banks issue a version of the Visa card
known as the SovCard.
And in the West,
it's the era of the yuppie, the young urban professional,
where anyone with ambition
can have a sports car complete with its own phone,
a top-of-the-range VCR,
a remote-control TV, and cassette player.
And everyone wants expensive vacations.
All paid for by that little piece of plastic.
[man] Many of these people couldn't really afford this holiday,
so they booked by credit card to defer the expense.
It'll catch up with them,
but they're not letting that stand in their way.
[bleeping]
[narrator] By 1986,
Americans owe around $110 billion on their credit cards.
That's about 1,000 times
what Live Aid raised for famine in Africa the previous year.
Five years later,
it will almost double to about $205 billion.
So, debt is all bad, right?
Well, yes and no.
Debt also fuels growth.
The financial services industry explodes,
creating jobs for hundreds of thousands of people.
In the 1990s, the retail sector booms,
helping to fuel extraordinary growth in the economy.
[reporter] The high-street consumer boom
wouldn't have happened without credit cards.
In Britain now, 13 million people pay with plastic.
[narrator] Multimillion-dollar construction projects
rely on credit to get started.
Want to buy a house or open a business?
Good luck doing that without a mortgage or loan.
So, debt might be bad for individuals,
but it can be great for the economy as a whole.
Now that credit cards are everywhere,
companies find themselves competing for a smaller pool of new customers.
So they add perks to the credit cards.
Reward programs like frequent-flier miles
or hotel and rental-car points.
But sometimes they're not terribly discerning
about whom they target.
[kids] ♪ …diamond in the sky… ♪
[reporter] Three-year-old Alessandra Scalise
is a Visa Platinum Card member.
[narrator] When little Alessandra of Rochester, New York,
gets a credit-card application in the mail,
her mom fills it out as a joke and mails it in.
The tiny tot soon has her own credit card
with a $5,000 credit limit.
[reporter] The only place this Visa card member wants to be
is near her mommy,
who will teach her all about money and credit
when she's older.
[woman] If you're gonna charge, you better have the money to pay.
[narrator] Clearly, there's little checking who can pay it back
and who can't.
By the year 2000,
total credit-card debt in America reaches $580 billion.
That's the cost of staging the Sydney Olympics 121 times.
[flames whoosh]
Many people are spending money they may not have,
packing on personal debt,
and with the arrival of the Internet, that's only going to get worse.
Because once online, you can shop till you drop
from your sofa.
Everything from books and clothes
to a brand-new car,
and all available at the touch of a button,
enabled by that tiny piece of plastic,
the credit card,
leaving brick-and-mortar stores out in the cold.
[reporter] At last, good news for retailers of a bumper sales day.
The problem for the high street is that it wasn't happening here.
It was Christmas on the keyboards
on what the Internet industry called Mega Monday.
[narrator] By 2008,
total credit-card debt in the US reaches a record high of $870 billion.
That's $500 billion more
than the US spent that year on the Army,
Air Force, and Navy combined.
And yet,
ready credit is still widely available.
Almost anyone can have it, whatever their income.
Our changed attitude towards debt
leads banks to offer mortgages to people with low incomes and little savings,
and those people to snap up those mortgages
with no way of paying them back.
Who cares?
It's just numbers on a piece of paper.
It all comes to a head in 2008.
[woman] This is what financial Armageddon looks like.
Red screens that scream, "Sell, sell, sell."
[narrator] It turns out those mortgages aren't just numbers on a piece of paper.
[men shout]
And when money owed can't be paid back,
the whole system comes crashing down,
sparking the biggest global financial crisis
since the Great Depression.
So has the great crash of 2008 ended our love of borrowing money?
Of course not.
Where's the recession? Everybody's shopping.
It's just the credit cards. That's what it is.
They're charging it, and they'll feel it in a month or two.
-When the bills come home. -You don't feel it when you swipe it.
[narrator] By 2019,
American credit-card debt stands at $930 billion.
And it's not just America that's drowning in debt.
In China,
the credit-card balance reaches $1.23 trillion in 2020.
And while UK total credit-card debt is less than $100 billion,
that's still enough for the British taxpayer
to fund more than 1,000 royal families.
The truth is
we're now hopelessly addicted to our cards.
[whooping]
Literally.
A recent MIT study used MRI readouts
to show how credit-card spending stimulates the brain's reward system,
a release of dopamine,
even more so than cash.
And that creates an urge for further spending.
Very stylish.
-[narrator] And yet… -["The Blue Danube" playing]
…never has there been a time in human history
when we have so many cool, exciting,
fun things to spend our money on.
Gadgets,
fashion,
sports,
luxurious foreign holidays.
[woman] I'm wearing the most expensive Bluetooth headset
in the world.
So it is made out of real pearls and diamonds and white gold.
Retail price would be 115,000 euros.
[narrator] Credit cards have made spending money easy.
Just a quick wave of a contactless card,
a tap on our phone,
or a swipe from your wristwatch.
And it's only going to get easier.
[beeping]
Companies are already introducing new ways of paying
using super-secure biometric authorization,
such as fingerprints,
facial recognition,
and iris scans.
We'll soon be buying all sorts of stuff
in the blink of an eye.
So, where do we go from here?
How will our brains rewire and adapt to this new form of payment and reward?
Will we find ourselves even further in debt?
Can we ever trust ourselves to spend wisely
when the credit card
is us?
[dramatic electronic music plays]