In some cases, the plates were kept in the issuing store rather than held by customers.
Charga-Plates were issued by large-scale merchants to their regular customers, much like department store credit cards of today. Charga-Plate was a trademark of Farrington Manufacturing Co. The record of the transaction included an impression of the embossed information, made by the imprinter pressing an inked ribbon against the charge slip. In recording a purchase, the plate was laid into a recess in the imprinter, with a paper "charge slip" positioned on top of it. It held a small paper card for a signature. It was embossed with the customer's name, city and state. It was a 2½ in × 1¼ in rectangle of sheet metal related to Addressograph and military dog tag systems.
The Charga-Plate, developed in 1928, was an early predecessor to the credit card and used in the U.S. Some charge cards were printed on paper card stock, but were easily counterfeited. Western Union had begun issuing charge cards to its frequent customers in 1921. In 1938 several companies started to accept each other's cards. It was first used in the 1920s, in the United States, specifically to sell fuel to a growing number of automobile owners. The modern credit card was the successor of a variety of merchant credit schemes. Bellamy used the term credit card eleven times in this novel, although this referred to a card for spending a citizen's dividend rather than borrowing. The concept of using a card for purchases was described in 1887 by Edward Bellamy in his utopian novel Looking Backward.
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