"Cash or credit?"

It's 1993, and this simple question at a Burger King drive-through is causing genuine confusion. In a CBS news segment that now seems almost quaint, reporter James Hattori captures customers' stunned reactions to the novel idea of using credit cards for fast food.

"I think it's pretty bad if you have to use a credit card when you go to a fast food restaurant for something as little as $3.10," one customer declares, shaking his head in disbelief.

Another patron, more optimistic about this payment revolution, grins: "If I use my GM card and I get a 5% rebate here long enough, I'll be able to buy a pickup truck."

But perhaps the most telling reaction comes from the speed-conscious customer: "I just hope it doesn't slow things down... because when I want a Whopper, I want it now."

The smallest credit card purchase that day? $2.50. The largest? Just over $10.

Today, we tap our cards for $2 coffees without a second thought. What seemed revolutionary, even absurd, to those Burger King customers became so mundane that we barely remember a world without plastic payments.

Experience this historic moment yourself at otim.com/bk, where we've recreated the 1993 CBS news segment that captured America's bewilderment at this payment revolution.

The Real Credit Card Revolution

The 1993 Burger King moment wasn't actually the beginning of the credit card revolution. It was the tipping point. The real groundwork had been laid decades earlier, following a pattern that's remarkably predictable for payment innovations.

Credit cards launched in 1958 with Bank of America's BankAmericard in Fresno, California. For nearly two decades, they remained a niche product for premium purchases at department stores and upscale restaurants. The cultural barrier was massive: credit was for big purchases, not daily spending.

Then came the 1970s, and everything changed. Citibank began aggressively mailing millions of unsolicited credit cards to consumers, a mass adoption strategy that would make modern marketing campaigns look conservative. The deregulation of usury laws made consumer lending profitable, and suddenly, everyone wanted in on the credit game.

But the real acceleration happened in the infrastructure race of the 1980s. Visa and MasterCard networks competed fiercely for merchants, building the electronic authorization systems that would make instant payments possible. We began shifting from "credit for emergencies" to "credit for convenience."

By the early 1990s, the tipping point was inevitable. McDonald's went plastic in 1992. When Burger King followed suit, offering customers that bewildering choice between "cash or credit" for a $3 meal, it wasn't really news. It was confirmation that a revolution had already happened.

The Same Skeptical Voices, Different Era

The parallels between those 1993 Burger King customers and today's emerging payment technologies are almost eerily precise.

"I can't imagine it working on a day-to-day basis," worried one customer about credit cards. Today, we hear identical refrains about new payment methods: "I can't imagine this working for regular purchases."

The speed concerns are particularly telling. In 1993, customers worried about "having to call New York and get confirmation" for credit card transactions. Today, people worry about processing times and network delays for digital payments. The underlying anxiety is identical: will this new payment system be fast enough for real-world commerce?

"When I want a Whopper, I want it now," declared that impatient customer thirty years ago. This sentiment echoes in every payment innovation: consumers demanding instant gratification while simultaneously fearing that new technology will slow them down.

But there was also early adopter enthusiasm then, just as there is now. That customer calculating his GM card rebate toward a pickup truck? He represents the eternal optimist who sees opportunity in new financial rails, always present during payment revolutions.

What the Burger King Customers Got Spectacularly Wrong

Here's what makes the 1993 footage so fascinating: nearly every concern those customers raised was either completely wrong or dramatically understated the transformation ahead.

The speed concerns were entirely temporary. That worry about "calling New York for confirmation" seems absurd now that credit card authorization happens in milliseconds. Electronic payment systems didn't just match cash for speed. They became faster, eliminating the need to count change or wait for cashiers to make calculations.

The "day-to-day basis" skepticism proved wildly off-mark. Credit cards didn't just become viable for daily use. They became the preferred method for most Americans. Today, many people go weeks without touching cash.

But the biggest miscalculation was imagining that convenience was the only benefit. "Workers won't have to figure out how much change the customer gets back," noted one observer, as if that minor efficiency gain was the extent of the innovation.

They couldn't envision rewards programs, fraud protection, credit building, purchase tracking, dispute resolution, or the massive ecosystem of financial services that would emerge around electronic payments. The infrastructure they were witnessing was just the foundation for a complete transformation of how money worked.

The Pattern Recognition

Historical analysis reveals payment revolutions follow predictable patterns:

Phase 1: Innovation (1950s-1960s for credit cards) New payment technology emerges, remains niche, faces cultural resistance.

Phase 2: Infrastructure (1970s-1980s for credit cards) Aggressive adoption strategies, regulatory changes, network effects build.

Phase 3: Tipping Point (1990s for credit cards) Mass merchant adoption signals mainstream acceptance is inevitable.

Phase 4: Ubiquity (2000s+ for credit cards) Technology becomes so commonplace that people forget it was ever controversial.

This pattern repeats with remarkable consistency. The internet followed it from ARPANET to the World Wide Web. Smartphones followed it from BlackBerry business tools to iPhone lifestyle devices. Each revolution compressed the timeline further, accelerated by existing digital infrastructure.

The Acceleration Effect

What took credit cards 35 years from launch to ubiquity took smartphones just 10 years. The infrastructure advantages we have today, global connectivity, instant communication, and digital-native consumers, compress adoption cycles dramatically.

More importantly, each payment revolution builds on the last. Credit cards taught consumers that electronic payments could be trustworthy. The internet taught them that digital transactions could be secure. Smartphones taught them that payments could be invisible and automatic.

The Next Revolution Is Already Here

The Burger King customers of 1993 couldn't imagine a world where their wallets would become computers, where every purchase would earn rewards, where they could buy anything online from anywhere in the world. They were witnessing the foundation of a transformation they couldn't comprehend.

Today, we're witnessing the foundation of the next transformation. Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology are following the exact same pattern—emerging from niche origins, building infrastructure, approaching their own tipping point.

The question isn't whether it will happen, but how quickly we'll look back and wonder why we ever doubted it.

That impatient 1993 customer demanding his Whopper "now" actually captured something profound about technological adoption. He feared new technology would slow him down. Instead, it made everything faster than he could imagine.

When you want progress, you want it now. And history shows that the infrastructure is always being built to deliver it, even when the customers can't see it coming.

Ready to experience the 1993 Burger King moment that started it all? Visit otim.com/bk to see how payment revolutions begin, and stay tuned for Part 2, where we'll explore why crypto is experiencing its own Burger King moment right now.