Money doesn&39;t have to be boring! Each week, CreditBloggers.com takes a look at the lighter side of the personal finance world in a series called Funny Money Friday.

Jim over at the blog Blueprint for Financial Prosperity has put together a pretty amazing list of 50 fun and interesting credit card facts. It&39;s a must read for any credit geek! Here are a few highlights:

3 - American Express started off as a shipping company in 1850.
7 - Visa actually stands Visa International Service Association.
22 - A fixed interest rate on a credit card can change with only 15 days of notice.
28 - Ever notice all your credit cards are of uniform shape and size? Their dimensions are governed by the ISO 7810 standard, an international standard for identification cards.
34 - Credit card numbers conform to the Luhn algorithm, which is just a simple checksum test on the number. What you do is start from the right and double each second digit (1111 becomes 2121), then add them all together, and you should end with a number evenly divisible by ten. If it doesn&39;t, it&39;s not a valid credit card number.
35 - The first digit of the number is the Major Industry Identifier. 1/2 are for airlines, 3 is for travel/entertainment, 4/5 for banking and financial, 6 for merchandising and financial, 7 for petroleum, 8 for telecommunications. 0 and 9 are for other assignments but you&39;ll likely never see them. If you look at an American Express card, you&39;ll see it starts with a 3, a throwback to their travel/entertainment roots.
48 - Each direct mailing acquisition costs approximately $80, according to R.K. Hammer, bank card advisory firm.

Pretty fascinating stuff! Here are ten bonus facts I&39;d like to add to Jim&39;s list:

51 - Some of the earliest credit cards were shaped like medallions, made out of metal or paper.
52 - Elvis, Johnny Cash, Donald Trump and Tiger Woods all have credit cards branded with their images.
54 - Credit card issuers charged off $42.2 billion in debts as a loss in 2005. This is the total unpaid debts that were included in bankruptcy filings or that were unable to be recovered by collection agencies.
55 - American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa lost $1.14 billion to fraud in 2005. The figure doesn&39;t include fraud costs passed on to merchants or from debit cards.
56 - Visa manages more than 65% of the world&39;s credit card purchase transactions in 2005. Although American Express, not Visa, had the top spot for debt volume per card at $6823.
57 - The average American household carries between $5,000 and $9,000 in credit card debt depending on which report you review.
58 - Capital One has a policy of not reporting card limits to the credit reporting agencies. This is most likely done to prevent competition from other issuers and can hurt a consumer&39;s credit score.
59 - The term "credit card" was first used in 1887 by Edward Bellamy in a book predicting a future where the government dolled out shares of the GDP.
60 - Credit card interest rates in other countries can be as high as 70% to 120% APR.

Do you have a good credit factoid or piece of trivia? Share it in the comments section below! Maybe we can help Jim reach 100 fun credit card facts. Many thanks to Blueprint for Financial Prosperity for putting together the list!