Credit Card News Articles

Customers taking out new credit cards can get interest-free offers for increasingly longer periods, new figures show. But there's debate about the motivations of the card providers concerned.

The figures come from MoneySupermarket, which says that new customers are offered a 0% rate on new purchases for an average of 12.2 months now, compared with 10.8 months at the same point in 2007. The average duration of a 0% period for balance transfers is now 15.4 months compared with 12.8 months three years ago. That timing is particularly significant as 2007 was the point when lending was at its peak.

One possible explanation for the change is that the card market is becoming more competitive and firms are Read Full Story

A credit card company is offering consumers a low-cost way to pay off their overdrafts. But credit experts are warning that people who aren't extremely careful could wind up losing out through the deal.

The MBNA deal offers new cardholders the option to borrow money on the card and have it transferred directly to their bank account, thus paying off their overdraft in part or full, a facility sometimes known as a super-balance transfer. As long as the transfer is carried out within 90 days of taking the card out, there is no handling fee and the money will only attract a rate of interest of 1.9% for the first 12 months.

Used carefully this could save a great deal of money compared with the interest Read Full Story

Small businesses are at an increasing risk of credit card fraud according to a lobbying group.

The Forum of Private Businesses says it has seen a notable increase in the past month of the number of calls it receives from members who've suffered payment processing fraud.

It says the biggest danger is online card payments, known as card-not-present transactions. If such purchases turn out to be fraudulent, the company may find that not only do they have to refund the money to the legitimate cardholder (while having sent the goods to the fraudster), but also have to cover the card issuer's costs in arranging the refund. As well as the financial loss, this can cause cashflow and accounting problems as the Read Full Story

Two major US mobile phone companies think they could strike a lethal blow to the credit card industry. AT&T and Verizon are working on a scheme to not only offer payment via mobile phone in place of cards, but to cut out the credit card companies altogether.

The scheme involves handsets having a special microchip which would mean user could make a payment by simply waving the phone across a special payment device, limiting the need for shop staff attention and cutting payment times.

Security would come via the phone's keypad itself and might involve a password rather than a PIN, thus improving security. The system would also mean a stolen phone could be immediately and remotely blocked from Read Full Story

Halifax has launched a credit card aimed specifically at holidaymakers. It says it's targeting customers who fear excessive fees using cards abroad.

The Clarity card has no cash advance fees when used at cash machines, either in the UK or overseas. There is also no foreign exchange fee for overseas spending. Most credit cards carry such a fee which is effectively hidden: it's applied to the exchange rate for the transaction, meaning the cardholder pays slightly more in sterling than they would with a straight exchange.

Domestic benefits of the card include a variety of cashback offers, no fee on balance transfers, and the fact than balance transfers are charged at the same APR as purchases. This means new customers who transfer a balance won't have to Read Full Story

Four men have been jailed for between 3.5 and 4.5 years each after being convicted of scamming the public out of £725,000 using bogus credit and debit card readers.

The group installed small devices in chip-and-pin card readers in five petrol stations across England. This was done without the knowledge of the station owners, though in some cases sales staff assisted in the scam.

The ringleader was discovered with 35,000 sets of card details on his laptop. That would be an average theft of £20 per card, though it's not clear how many cards were actually exploited.

Scammers are said to target petrol stations as customers are usually in a hurry and less alert and security conscious. That said, it doesn't appear as if there was any visible way Read Full Story