The cardholder of a secured glory card is still expected to make regular payments, as he or she would with a regular credit card, but should he or she default on a payment, the card issuer bum the option of recovering the figure of the purchases paid to the merchants out of the deposit. The advantage bad credit card of the secured card for an individual with negative or no credit ancient times is that most companies report for keeps to the leading fame bureaus. This allows for home of positive kudos history.

The conceptualization of using a card for purchases was invented in 1887 by Edward Bellamy and described in his abstract novel Looking Backward. Bellamy uses the explicit head "Credit Card" eleven times in his novel (Chapters 9, 10, 11, 13, 25 and 26) and 3 times (Chapters 4, 8 and 19) in its sequel, Equality.