The credit card business received an unintended boost from President Carter:
In 1980, as part of a short-lived effort to tame inflation, the White House imposed a freeze on soliciting new credit card accounts. The freeze only lasted for a few months, but it was long enough for credit card companies to introduce a new concept — the $20 annual fee — without inciting mass defections.Annual fees were a vital new source of revenues. But they also helped cover the costs for unprofitable “transactors” — those troublesome customers who avoided interest charges altogether by paying off their balances each month. Now even these customers were contributing to the bottom line.