In message , at 14:43:29 on Sat, 26 May
2012, Roland Perry remarked:
Is it just my age or was it only around the turn of the millenium that the
debit card really took off?

The Natwest Maestro/Switch debit card was well into its stride 20 years
ago (replacing their Servicetill cashcard that was launched in the mid
70's).

As luck would have it, I was doing some sorting out yesterday and found
the leaflet issued with my first Switch card, which was dated 1990,
although the list of outlets which took the card was short enough they
could print it inside (although it grew quite quickly).

The proposition was "here's a way to use your ATM card in shops as
well", instead of a chequebook. It was still called a Servicecard, and
the Switch part of it was just an additional logo.

In those days there wasn't yet full interoperability of ATMs, you had to
know which banks to use - eg Natwest, Midland[1] and TSB[2] (plus some
smaller regional ones) in this case.

[1] Now HSBC.
[2] Now merged with Lloyds.
--
Roland Perry