Choice was a

credit card A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...

test market A test market, in the field of business and marketing, is a geographic region or demographic group used to gauge the viability of a product or service in the mass market prior to a wide scale roll-out. The criteria used to judge the acceptabilit ...

ed by

Citibank Citibank, N. A. (N. A. stands for " National Association") is the primary U.S. banking subsidiary of financial services multinational Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, and later became First National City ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, announced in 1977, and first issued in 1978. It was one of the first cards to offer a cash refund program, and no annual fee. Choice was intended to create a rival to

Visa Visa most commonly refers to: *Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company ** Visa Debit card issued by the above company ** Visa Electron, a debit card ** Visa Plus, an interbank network *Travel visa, a document that allows ...

, MasterCard, and

American Express American Express Company (Amex) is an American multinational corporation specialized in payment card services headquartered at 200 Vesey Street in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The company was found ...

, but proved unsuccessful, and was withdrawn in 1987. Citibank has continued to use the "Choice" name on some of its Visa and MasterCard cards. The card was introduced in 1977, when Citibank bought NAC, a regional credit card based in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, renaming it Choice. A subsequent campaign in

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

in 1980 turned the card into a regional success, earning more than one million cardholders in the Baltimore and

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

, area. With a view to nationwide expansion, the test market was expanded to include

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

. Despite the success of

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

Discover Card Discover is a credit card brand issued primarily in the United States. It was introduced by Sears in 1985. When launched, Discover did not charge an annual fee and offered a higher-than-normal credit limit, features that were disruptive to the e ...

, which offered many of the same features as Choice when it was introduced in 1985 (such as a rebate on purchases and no annual fee), Citibank decided Choice could not compete with Visa and MasterCard in the longer term, and the card was reissued as a Visa at the end of 1987, aimed at entry level customers and those with poor credit. It was also said that Citibank's owner, Citicorp, was not willing to accept the eventual estimated costs of establishing another national credit card, after Sears had spent an estimated USD$80 million creating its Discover Card. Its fate was similar to that of Citibank's first credit card, the "First National City Charge Service" (or "

The Everything Card The First National City Charge Service, marketed as The Everything Card, was an early credit card introduced by First National City Bank (now Citibank) in the eastern United States in 1967. It was intended as a response to the BankAmericard (today's ...

"), introduced on the East Coast in 1967 to compete with BankAmericard (today's Visa) but which became part of Master Charge (now MasterCard) in 1969.

References

Citigroup Credit cards in the United States Products introduced in 1977 {{econ-stub