Andrew Seth Kahr was the founder and CEO of First Deposit Corp, which later became known as Providian, and was acquired by Washington Mutual in 2005; it is now owned by Chase Bank.
Andrew Kahr grew up in New York City, where he attended the Fieldston School of the Ethical Culture Society. He went to Harvard University in 1957 and graduated three years later, in 1960. He earned his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1962 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His thesis was "A Minimal Reduction Class for the Entscheidungsproblem".[1] Following that he attended Harvard Business School.
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Class action lawsuit
In a 1999 cardholder class-action lawsuit against Providian, 12 internal company documents were obtained by The San Francisco Chronicle.[2]
Publicity
For his role in forming the credit card business, he was interviewed by the PBS Frontline documentary "Secret History of the Credit Card".[3] He claims to have introduced the two percent minimum monthly payment in the credit card business (as opposed to the usual five percent), as well as the idea of a zero percent financing introductory rate in mass mailings and solicitations.
References
- ^ "Andrew Seth Kahr entry". The Mathematics Genealogy Project. http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=63430.
- ^ Zuckerman, Sam (2002-05-05). "How Providian misled card holders". The San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/05/05/MN138910.DTL.
- ^ ""Secret History of the Credit Card" transcript". Frontline. WGBH. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/etc/script.html.
External links
- Secret History of the Credit Card. Frontline. PBS. WGBH, Boston. 23 November 2004. Transcript. (episode available online)
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