-
Diners Club
Diners Club is credited with creating the world's first universal payment card, initially used for 27 restaurants in New York -
American Express Card
American Express launches one of the very first actual credit cards. -
ATMs
The first networked ATM appears in Dallas, Texas. -
Magstrip
IBM invents the magnetic striped plastic card, which allows bank and credit cards to be read electronically. -
Debit Cards
The first debit card is issued in Seattle by The First National Bank of Seattle. -
First Online Transaction
Huge debate surrounding this, but it is rumored that Pizza Hut was the very first online encrypted transaction. It was a large pepperoni and mushroom pizza with extra cheese. -
Mobile Payments
The first RFID contactless payment system is launched by ExxonMobile, which allowed customers to wave the Speedpass technology to pay at the gas pump. -
Paypal
Paypal is founded with the idea in mind to bring payments fully online. -
Paypal Mafia
Paypal founders Peter Thiel & Elon Musk, along with other early employees, use their wealth to re-invest into the startup ecosystem, creating some of the most important tech companies in the last decade. Including Tesla, SpaceX, Palantir, Facebook, Founders Hub, & LinkedIn. Paypal is also estimated at $90 billion dollars. -
Google Checkout
Google Checkout launches with aim of simplifying online purchases and payments. -
iPhone & Android
The first generation iPhone is released and Google's Android is revealed the same year. -
Estonian DDoS Attacks
Following the contentious relocation of a Soviet-era statue in Tallinn, Estonia fell victim to a series of coordinated DDoS attacks against government, bank, university, and newspaper websites that lasted three weeks. -
Ameritrade Data Breach
On September 14, 2007, online brokerage firm TD Ameritrade revealed that its database was the target of a data breach that led to the theft of 6.3 million customer account records. -
Citibank ATM Theft
In early 2008, a Russian hacking ring stole $2 million after penetrating a network of Citibank-affiliated ATMs across New York City. -
Bitcoin
The "genesis block" is mined by Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, setting off the blockchain revolution. Innovations on the blockchain are a key driving force behind advances in payments tech today. -
Starbucks Mobile App
The mega coffee chain Starbucks rolls out their mobile application, which sets forth a new era of ordering online through mobile devices and paying from the same device. -
Stripe & Square
Square, founded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter, launches in 2010 as a mobile payments processor that enables merchants to take transactions pretty much anywhere. Simultaneously, Patrick and John Collison, found payments startup Stripe, and get investments from Paypal alumni Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Max Levchin. Today, the two companies are worth billions. -
Nasdaq Intrusion
In October 2010, the FBI detected an intrusion on servers used by financial markets operator Nasdaq. -
Citigroup Data Theft
In June, Citigroup announced that 360,000 card details in the United States were exposed after attackers exploited a URL vulnerability that allowed them to hop between accounts by slightly changing the website address. -
U.S. Financial Exchange DDoS Attacks
In February 2012, financial exchange operators Nasdaq, CBOE, and BATS were hit by DDoS attacks for several days, resulting in patchy access to company websites but with no disruptions to trading. -
Ethereum
Vitalik Buterin launches Ethereum with the objective of building decentralized applications like smart contracts. Smart contracts allow for autonomous and more complex payment transactions on the blockchain. -
JPMorgan Chase Data Breach
In August 2014, the first reports emerged that account information and home addresses for 83 million customers were exposed after attackers stole login credentials from a JPMorgan Chase employee. -
Health Insurer Hacks
In February 2015, reports indicated that records for almost 80 million customers were stolen from Anthem, a U.S. healthcare insurer, after attackers deployed a spearphishing email that gave access to ninety of the company’s systems, including its back-end database. -
Equifax Hack leads to Data Breach
In one of the biggest data breaches on record, the credit reporting agency Equifax announced in October 2017 that more than 150 million customer records had been compromised, including some sensitive data such as birth dates and 12,000 U.S. social security numbers. -
Capital One Data Breach
On July 29, Capital One announced that it had suffered a data breach compromising the credit card applications of around 100 million individuals after a software engineer hacked into a cloud-based server.
