It all started at Major's Cabin Grill in New York City.

Businessman Frank McNamara was dining at the restaurant and forgot his wallet.

His wife drove for 45 minutes to deliver his wallet to the restaurant and in that 45 minutes he came up with an idea.

What if there was a card that you could charge your restaurant check to and then you could pay off the balance at the end of the month?

No need to carry cash around and the restaurant could keep your card on file so if you forgot your wallet, no problem.

McNamara discussed the idea with his lawyer and with his friend Alfred S.

Bloomingdale, the grandson of the founder of Bloomingdale's department store in New York.

A year later he walked back into Major's Cabin Grill and paid his check with his new Diners Club card.

At the time it was made of cardboard, charged the member a $5 annual fee and the restaurant a 7% merchant fee.

Although 7% sounds a lot by today's standards, McNamara said in a newspaper interview at the time, it saves the restaurant owners a lot of bookkeeping and the bother of collecting bad debts.

After all, Diners Club was now responsible for collecting on those debts, not the restaurants.

The club quickly grew from just 200 of McNamara's friends and family at the start up to 20,000 members by the end of 1950 and then to 42,000 in 1951, expanding across the US.

In 1953 they expanded across the world and by 1967 Diners Club was accepted in 130 countries.

Alfred S.

Bloomingdale was involved with Diners Club at the beginning but then started a competing venture in California called Dine & Sign, which later merged with Diners Club and he joined the board of directors.

Bloomingdale would later serve as CEO from 1964 to 1969.

In addition to being the first charge card, Diners Club is also the grandfather of Amex Travel, Expedia and just about any computerized travel booking system you can think of.

In 1969 they created Reservations World, the first hotel reservation service that allowed users to book hotels anywhere in the world by dialing a toll-free number.

This developed further in 1984 when Diners Club created the credit card industry's first rewards program called Club Rewards.

In contrast, membership rewards from American Express didn't start until 1991.

But Diners Club wouldn't dominate the credit card industry forever.

Frank McNamara had said in a newspaper interview in the 50s, It's so simple an idea that at least 25 people have told me they had the same idea before me but they didn't follow through.

Well, that may have been true before he launched his card, but once others saw the success of Diners Club, they all wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

Hilton Hotels launched Cart Blanche in 1958, which would become the most prestigious card in the world despite having a small number of card members.

And American Express launched their card the same year and Amex really started to give Diners Club a run for their money.

Eventually, American Express won and came to dominate the members card space, despite Diners Club having pioneered many aspects of American Express' business model, such as the card itself, a travel booking service, and a membership points system.

Cart Blanche also faltered and later merged with Diners Club.

Diners Club was acquired by Citigroup in 1981 and then by Discover Financial Services in 2008, and Canadian bank BMO currently owns the rights to the North American franchise.

Sadly, the cards aren't what they once were.

In 2004, Diners Club had done a deal with Mastercard to use their payment network.

This led to far wider acceptance of Diners Club cards but came at a price.

The merchant fees Mastercard charged were lower and thus this meant less revenue for Diners Club and thus less rewards offered to card members.

Gary Leff wrote in travel blog View from the Wing, Up until 2005, Diners Club was a great card.

It gave you an outstanding rewards program on top of the two full billing cycles to pay.

Free iDine Prime, 20% back or more at participating restaurants, concierge services, and primary collision damage coverage for rental cars.

Back in 2006, the Diners Club card eliminated restaurant benefits, which struck me as absurd.

We used to see the annual summer 100% transfer bonus to British Airways.

That dropped to 50% for a while and in recent times, that's been down to 30%.

Right now, Diners Club does have a large selection of transfer partners such as British Airways, Alaska and Delta, as well as some more unusual ones such as SAS, South African Airways and Iceland Air.

Points typically transfer at a 1 to 1 ratio.

You can also transfer to Hilton, Marriott and Starwood but at less favourable ratios.

Or you could just spend 18,000 points on this.

Ok, it is 3 feet wide, but seriously, who would want that?

Sadly, in North America, the cards are not available to new applicants at the time of this video.

Some commentators in online forums such as Flyertalk blame manufactured spenders for taking advantage of the card's generous categories to earn huge rewards which cost the company a lot of money.

For example, the Diners Club Elite card offers 3x bonus categories at gas stations, drug stores and grocery stores.

I think you can see the potential.

CVS, for example, is a drug store and they sell Visa prepaid gift cards, just what manufactured spenders want.

This article talks about a guy who spent $119 in activation fees on $10,000 worth of Visa gift cards which he then used to pay back his Diners Club card, probably via another card, such as Amex Serve, and earned 30,000 points in the process that he then transferred to SPG.

That could probably get you close to $1,000 worth of hotel stays.

This is why many cards limit spending in bonus categories or give bonus categories that are hard to do manufactured spend in, such as travel.

Right now, the Diners Club cards on the company's US website don't look especially competitive on benefits, except for the great selection of transfer partners.

None of them are accepting new applications, although the corporate card does allow you to inquire.

I hope Diners Club does make it back for a relaunch sometime in the future, since it would be a shame to see a company with so much history fade into obscurity.

Guys, what do you think about all this?

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