A Diners Club card will not be found in the wallet of every modern gamer. In fact, many may not have ever even seen one. The first time I’d ever heard of it was in the film Planes, Trains & Automobiles. When explaining to Neal how he was able to rent a car with just “shower rings,” Del says sheepishly, “Well… your diners club card wound up in my wallet and I just…”

What is a Diners Club card?

These days Diners Club is part of the Discover banking network. The majority of their cards are credit cards, just like a Mastercard or Visa etc. They can be used in exactly the same way, provided that the merchant accepts it as a payment method. You can still pay with Diners Club cards in many shops and online stores around the world, but they are not as widely accepted as Visas and Mastercards. Surprisingly, however, their history is a longer one.

Diners Club History

Diners Club was founded in 1950 by a man named Frank MacNamara, who pioneered the first ever charge card. The story of how he came to invent it is called the “First Supper,” and remains forever in company lore.

The story goes that MacNamara and his wife were dining in a New York City restaurant with some clients when it occurred to him that he’d left his wallet in another suit. Humiliated and cashless, his wife had to bail him out and pay for the entire dinner. This, according to the company’s official tomes, meant “he resolved never to be embarrassed again and founded Diners Club.”

The following year, Frank returned to the restaurant “Major’s Cabin Grill,” with his business partner Ralph Schneider. This time, instead of fumbling about for his Benjamin Franklins, he flashed a small card made of cardboard. Slightly flimsy and chewed up around the edges, this was supposedly the first meal paid for by charge card.

What are charge cards?

Charge cards function somewhere between credit and debit cards. When you make a purchase, Diners Club, for example, will front the funds and then the customer will be billed the full amount monthly. This differs from a credit card in the sense that although the card company fronts the cost, you do not have to pay the amount in full at the end of the month, just an agreed amount. There are no late fees as such, but interest accrues. This differs from debit cards because the funds are simply pulled straight from the customers bank account attached to the card.

By 1967 Diners Club was accepted in over 130 countries, more than were members of the United Nations at the time. This was pretty much the zenith. Though Frank MacNamara is recognized as one of the most important American business pioneers of the 20^th Century, the Diners Club cannot quite replicate its former glories.

Diners Club and Online Casinos

If a casino accepts Diners Card credit cards as a deposit method, the mechanics are no different to using a Mastercard or Visa credit card. Enter in the card name and numbers and the billing address and you’ll be good to go. The challenge will likely be finding the online casinos that accept it. You’re in luck. Here we feature the casinos that accept this particular payment method.