Credit cards were originally made of cardboard.

“Plastic” is synonymous with credit cards these days, but that wasn’t always the case. The first credit card was created in 1949 after businessman Frank McNamara forgot to bring his wallet to dinner one night in New York City. The acute embarrassment he felt was enough to inspire him to create a solution alongside his business partner Ralph Schneider. It came in the form of the Diners’ Club card, which was made of cardboard and allowed its users to pay their restaurant bills monthly rather than at the time of service. (Unlike with today’s credit cards, the balance had to be paid in full every month.)

The Diners’ Club was a hit, and a number of companies followed suit. One of them was American Express, which introduced a paper credit card in 1958 and the first plastic credit card a year later. The new material was more durable than its predecessors and also more fraud-resistant, as the letters and numbers were raised rather than simply written. Diners’ Club, which amassed 42,000 members within its first year and 1 million by 1959, was acquired by Citibank in 1981 and has been owned by Discover since 2008.