Discover Card is one of the four major credit card brands issued primarily in the United States, with over 50 million cardholders. The Discover Card was originally introduced by Sears in 1985, and was part of Dean Witter, and then Morgan Stanley, until 2007, when Discover Financial Services became an independent company.
 

Most cards with the Discover brand are issued by Discover Bank. Discover Card transactions are processed through the Discover Network payment network. As of February 2006, the company announced that it would begin offering Discover Debit cards to banks, made possible by the Pulse payment system, which Discover acquired in 2004.
 

History
At the time the Discover Card was introduced, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. It had purchased the Dean Witter Reynolds Organization (brokerage) and Coldwell, Banker & Company (real estate) in 1981, as an attempt to add financial services to its portfolio of customer services. Together with the Discover Card, this was named the Sears Financial Network. Early Discover Cards bore a small embossed symbol representing the Sears Tower, the company's headquarters at the time.

 

Discover and Novus retired acceptance mark Unlike other attempts at creating a credit card to rival MasterCard and VISA, such as Citibank's Choice card, which was test-marketed prior to the introduction of the Discover Card but reissued as a Visa card in late 1987, the Discover Card quickly gained a large national consumer base. It carried no annual fee, which was uncommon at the time, and offered a typically higher credit limit than similar cards. Cardholders could earn a "Cash back Bonus," in which a percentage of the amount spent would be refunded to the account (as high as 1%), depending on how much the card was used. The Discover Card was also noteworthy for being the only credit card accepted by the U.S. Customs Service to pay customs duty.