Nationwide

Nationwide, which is the largest building society in the UK, has led the way in providing consumer-friendly credit card services.

It became the first to introduce a "summary box" outlining all key rates and charges on its credit cards in 2002. This move was quickly copied by the rest of Britain's banks.

Nationwide campaigned vigorously on the issue of "negative order of payments", which meant that the cheapest debt was paid off first, insisting that the practice was unfair and detrimental to customers - it was outlawed in early 2011 for all credit card issuers.

Nationwide had already moved to a "positive order of payments", making it the first financial institution to apply a card user's monthly payment to reduce the most expensive debt first.

Nationwide was also one of the only card issuers to allow customers to make foreign purchases and ATM withdrawals free of charge. This practice, which Nationwide dropped in 2009, has since been copied by several other credit card companies.

It was also the first provider in the UK to issue a Visa Delta debit card in 1991.