I get needing expiration dates back when they first came out, but it seems sort of antiquated in today’s world.
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A bit more details to the card security mentioned in the above comments, all the credit cards of at least visa and Mastercard are personalized with an Emv digital certificate which has an expiry date(way longer than the expiry date of the card in most cases). These certificates do expire and new ones are created with longer key lengths and expiry dates. So to give you a card with new a new certificate, your card needs to be renewed.
Discovery Card used to expire in 2 years, so when I called in to activate the card, they tried to upsell me debt transfer products. I stopped using Discover years ago, so I don’t know if they still pull that crap.
OK explain this one for me please. For my ATM/Debit card with my credit union, if you don’t use it for 6 months, they deactivate it and it wastes a lot of time activating it again. They actually make you call them and when you ask them why they did it, they always reply that’s it’s a security measure. Why?
I’ve physically worn out a credit card before. They want you to replace the card before it gets too damaged.
All the answers miss the point. OP does not ask why physical cards are replaced from time to time or why card numbers expire. They ask why is the expiry date printed on the card?
And this is indeed somewhat historic. Since you can cancel a card before it expires, the information is not that useful. Sure, it may help phasing out old cards to have an explit date on every card issued.
I think if you don’t use a card for a period of time, they don’t send you a new one when it expires, and then your card/account becomes inactive, and then it eventually drops off your credit report. If they relied on people to cancel their cards, they’d have a bunch of people walking around with open lines of credit, which is a fraud risk.
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