Credit Cards
The Credit Card is a small piece of plastic that is incredibly easy to acquire, but terribly difficult to get rid of.
The credit card was designed for two reasons:
First, it allowed a financial transaction to be carried out without the user (a) having any hard currency in his pocket, or (b) having any hard currency in his bank account.
Second, it allowed the banks to make money from their service to customers without (a) actually spending any money of their own, or (b) actually providing a service.
Credit cards come in only one size, shape and specification which, surprisingly, has managed to accommodate the needs of every galactic species ever encountered. This masterpiece of design engineering has allowed the credit card to be used anywhere and everywhere in the universe.
How the credit card came to have such a simple specification was, until its revelation here, a secret closely guarded by the secret society of Senior Brantisvogan Galactibank Executives that originally came up with it.
The society decided that the existence of a universally accepted form of credit card would ensure their perpetual grip on galactic society. Such a card therefore had to be usable by every single species across the totality of time and space.
For this reason the credit card predates the existence of all life in the universe.
The logic runs thus: The evolution of organic life is based upon its ability to tune into a pre-existing biological template through a process known as morphic resonance. In other words, once the development of a particular form of organic or abstract life has taken place it will provide feedback into the morphic field from which future life forms will evolve. So the oldest life form in the universe will have determined the size and shape of every other life form that followed it.
"Thus," the credit card designers reasoned, "if we come up with a design that has both organic and abstract components, and then send it back to a time before life existed, the credit card will establish the morphic field from which all life will evolve. Thus all organic forms of life will evolve to be able to use such a card, while all abstract forms of life will develop the urge to use it."
So what does a credit card actually do?
Simply put, the credit card rotates the balance of a customer's account transactions in order to maximise the Galactibanks' profits in the form of interest and late payment fees.
This involves the removal of bank charges before payment is due, so that the customer has never paid enough of their balance off to (a) clear previously accrued debts, or (b) anticipate the cost of future bank charges.
The reason that all of this is possible is because the Galactibanks are extremely large, and allegedly have branches in every corner of the universe.
In truth, the Galactic Banking Grid is a network capable of conducting all of its transactions faster than the speed of light. Transactions are not, however, instantaneous. All transactions travel from the point of sale to the point of payment along carefully plotted vectors that bisect the Galaxy's various time zones. This ensures that, regardless of how quickly the transaction actually takes place, its apparent duration makes the Galactibanks lots and lots of interest.
For this reason it is commonplace for a credit card application to be submitted along with a bankruptcy declaration.
However distasteful the use of credit cards may be for the individual, they are still considered to be essential tools for business. The amount of productivity gained and efficiency saved by placing all of its transactions onto credit cards makes the charges paid to the Galactibanks the cheapest way of managing a Megacorporation's finances.
Especially when employees receive company credit cards in lieu of actual wages.
This is because the Megacorporations, like the Galactibanks, have offices and operatives in every corner of the universe. Just as the Galactic Banking Grid calculates the slowest possible apparent route for transactions to appear to take place, the Megacorporations are busy working out the fastest probable route for these transactions, and employ Corporate Network Saboteurs to manipulate the grid into minimising their debt and maximising their profits.
The natural by-product of these interactions is the secret war that has raged unchecked between the Corporate Network Saboteurs and the Galactibank SysOps for thousands of years, much to the annoyance of the Intergalactic insurance industry, whose claims departments spend most of their time footing the bill.