Credit-Card Phone Firm Is Ready to Start

New companies also are being formed to tap the fledgling market for phones operated by credit cards to capture revenues primarily from long-distance calls.

Among the first to enter this business is National Pay Telephone Corp., based in Los Angeles. The company plans to have its first system of 150 phones installed by the end of February in Las Vegas in a group of hotels, an airport terminal and a truck stop.

“We’re, in effect, an independent telephone company,” says President Ross B. Scheer. National Pay Telephone, which started in August, 1983, buys service from local phone companies and from long-distance carriers such as American Telephone & Telegraph and MCI Communications and resells to the public.

The company’s phones accept American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Carte Blanche and Diners Club cards and can give calling instructions in five languages. The company offers a toll-free 800 maintenance number and 24-hour service.

“This is a new business,” says Scheer, a former marketing executive with Bally Manufacturing Corp. “There are not enough pay phones out there for the public now.” He says his company sees its credit card phones--which are manufactured by several suppliers--as “an adjunct to what’s already out there.”

AT&T; and some of the operating companies divested in the Bell System breakup have already entered this market with phones that accept credit cards. “We’re not competing,” Scheer says. “We’re going to become very good customers” of the phone companies and long-distance carriers.

Scheer said National Pay Telephone plans to be in business in California this year.