A rechargeable calling card is a type of telephone card that the user can "recharge" or "top up" by adding money when the balance is low. Introduced in the early 1990s the rechargeable calling card has become the most common telephone card available after the original calling card was introduced in Italy in 1977. Calling cards introduced in the early 1990s had a set amount that could be spend and, once the credit was used, the card would be discarded. As the calling card began to gain popularity around the world it turned into a multi-million dollar industry. In an attempt to improve, the card companies started releasing rechargeable calling cards.
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In many respects the card is now like a debit card. Money can be added when the balance gets too low, allowing the user to continue using the same card. Cards can be recharged or topped up in a variety of ways:
With the explosion of the internet many companies started to offer virtual rechargeable calling card making it possible to make calls from any phone anywhere in the world. In most cases the customer will call an access number, enter their pin and then dial the number. With the advent of rechargeable cards the customer is able to add credit at the same time as calling.
Even though the calling card was invented in Italy the country that took to the calling card most was Japan, introduced in 1982, 5 years after Italy, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) introduced the phone card. It was an instant hit, selling thousands a day on the Metro in Tokyo and Osaka, various other companies began to get involved and released their own variants. In 2000 Brastel Telecom released the first rechargeable phone card in Japan called Brastel Card, this time the card was sold in convenience stores across Japan. As the rechargeable phone card took off, more companies began to release cards. At the moment the top companies are:
As international travel became cheaper and more people started to travel the international phone card became an essential part of a travelers` itinerary, previously customers would have to carry one or more cards when traveling and the cards could only be used in certain phones. Phone companies began to release "cardless" phone cards, instead of being issued with a real card, the user will be given a list of access numbers for various countries and a pin which they can use to log into their account. This allowed people to call from any phone in any country and still be able to top-up their credit.