About the Company
Headquartered in Riverwoods, Illinois, Discover Financial Services is the parent company of Discover Bank. It offers direct banking and payment services to Americans and has an employee base of 17,200 people as of 2020. The company also owns Diners Club Internationals and operates Discover as well as Pulse networks.
It offers services pertaining to credit cards, online banking, personal loans, home loans, deposits, payments and student loans. With approximately 50 million cardholders, Discover Cards is one of the largest credit card brands in the US. The company also services its customers with credit resources, personal loan resources, college planning advice and deposit resources.
Discover is one of the S&P 500 components since 2007 and trades under the symbol DFS in the New York Stock Exchange. It entered the Fortune 500 family in 2009, and in 2020 it held the 231st rank under it.
Discover credit was introduced in 1985 by Sears in conjunction with a brokerage firm named Dean Witter Reynolds and Coldwell Banker & Company, a real estate franchise. Together, these three entities started to operate under Sears Financial Network as its banner. The financial service branch of this company was sold off with Dean Witter Reynolds as Discover’s in-charge. This new independent company was named Dean Witter, Discover & Co. and in 1997, merged with Morgan Stanley, an investment banking house. It was newly called Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Discover & Co. which was eventually changed to Discover Financial Services, Inc. in 1999.
On 30th June 2007, Discover spun off from its parent organisation and became an independent publicly-traded company. Throughout its corporate journey, from its inception till 2020, it has made four major acquisitions, including that of the Greenwood Trust Company in 1911, Pulse in 2005, Diners Club International from Citigroup in 2008 and Home Loan Centre from tree.com, Inc. in 2012. Over the years, it has received numerous recognitions under prestigious entities from the business world. In 2020 itself, it had achieved positions in lists like Chicago Tribune‘s Top Workplace for the 11th time, anita.org’s Top Companies for Women Technologists Participant and IDG’s Computerworld’s Best Places to Work in IT.;
Organisation | Discover Financial Services |
Industry | Credit Services |
HeadQuarters | Riverwoods, IL |