Credit Card

I found some information online about some best credit cards…

It was explained that this is the five best available for graduate

1. Capital One, Journey Student Rewards: It offers 1% cash back on all purchases and provides an additional 0.25% reward when you pay your bill on time. You can get the reward as either a check or an account credit. There’s no annual fee, nor a limit on the amount of rewards you can earn in a year. But the interest rate is 19.8%.

2. Citi Dividend Platinum Select MasterCard for College Students: It offers 1% cash back on most purchases, but higher rewards on rotating categories of purchases and on gasoline and convenience store purchases. However, maximum rewards are limited to $300 a year. Interest rate varies based on your credit, going from 12.99% to 20.99%

3. Discover Open Road Card for Students: Has a complicated rewards program that pays 2% on the first $250 of gasoline and restaurant purchases in a month; and then pays 1% on purchases over $3,000 annually. Purchases below the $3,000 — and not subject to the 2% rate — earn 0.25%. Sheesh. I suppose checking your rewards balance can at least test your math skills. The interest rate varies from $12.99% to 18.99%.

4. Capital One Cash Rewards for Newcomers: Even high school graduates can apply for this card, which gives you 2% cash back on travel purchases and 1% on everything else — the nice straightforward reward structure that Capital One favors. The downside? If you carry a balance, the interest rate on this card is a whopping 24.9%.

5. Orchard Bank Secured Card: If you can’t qualify for any of the other cards, and no one will co-sign to help you qualify, consider the Orchard Bank secured card. Secured cards provide a credit limit that is equivalent to the amount you have on deposit with their bank. In other words, it’s really not credit at all. But, it does help you establish a credit history that will allow you to get better credit in the future. There’s no annual fee on the card for the first year. After that, they charge $35. (The best advice is to apply for another card that doesn’t charge an annual fee before the year is up, since you’ll hopefully have enough credit history for something better by then.) There’s no cash-back rewards, but the interest rate is a more modest 7.99%.

After some time using credit card, for me personally… i think many credit card is just similiar… most of it have high to very high rate…

Maybe for consumers, instead of choosing the best credit cards… we should concentrate more on how to maximise our knowledge on credit cards so we will not fall victim of our own mind trap

This is one of the funniest news about credit card that I ever heard of…

SARNIA, Ont. — Kelly Sloan’s dog Spark could be eligible for up to $30,000 in credit, even though the sheltie-spaniel mix died 10 years ago.

The Sarnia man was leafing through his mail last week when he found a letter from Capital One, urging its addressee to apply for a special credit card offer.

“We’re not offering our low long-term rate to just anyone,” said the letter, addressed to Spark Sloan, who died nearly at age 13.

“They’ve got the right name, the right address, and it’s a heck of a deal. She can apply online today, and I guess, get her card,” Kelly said.

“With the economy the way it is, I can understand they’re becoming a little more lenient than they were as far as passing out credit cards.”

The Sloan family saga with Capital One began more than a decade ago.

Sloan’s father had a Capital One credit card. When he died in 1999, Kelly contacted the company to cancel the card.

But the notices, updates and requests for information kept coming, addressed to his deceased father.

“I was contacting them saying, ‘The man’s dead, please stop,’” Sloan said.

The pile continued to grow.

Frustrated, Sloan filled out a form creatively. Years later, Spark is getting posthumous offers in the mail.

If Spark had gotten her paws on some plastic while alive, she might have bought herself a hula hoop, Sloan said.

When contacted, Capital One apologized for their mistake.

“We do comb through to make sure we’re sending them to the appropriate people, but obviously there’s an error here and we apologize,” said Capital One representative Laurel Ostfield.

The company collects data in different ways, she said, explaining how a form filled out using an animal’s information could find its way onto a mailing list.

The letter was an offer, subject to approval. Spark would still have to jump through a few hoops to get her paws on a credit card.

“Once we receive a completed application, we do a number of additional checks that are designed to confirm the information provided is accurate and only legally approved applicants will be considered,” Ostfield said.

Sloan said he’s had enough of the run-around from Capital One, adding the company could have at least offered a better rate.

“It’s guaranteed,” he said, “but I think that’s still two points over prime.”

Source: lfpress.com

Credit card debt could result in worse recession

So President Barack Obama came to Milwaukee to tour the Master Lock factory. After three years, he is now turning to the making of jobs.

If the money that went to those banks had been loaned to businesses to expand their plants and sell overseas instead of outsourcing, there would be so many more jobs produced than lost. The industries in this country seem to think that their products produced overseas cheaply can be bought by people with no jobs.

The national credit card debt is at $1 trillion, so there is not much more that people can buy on credit. When there are a number of credit card users not able to meet their minimum payments, then you will see what a bad recession really is. This country has been built on good credit ratings, so if it becomes difficult or impossible to obtain credit to buy a vehicle or house, then those banks with all that money will not have any way to make loans and their money will have to go into government bonds.

So maybe the next Milwaukee Journal Sentinel forum should have the experts tell us poor mortals why these banks cannot loan money to companies who need the money to expand and produce good-paying jobs.

Carlo Santarelli
Milwaukee

Source: jsonline.com

NEW YORK — Phoenix Marketing International, one of the fastest growing marketing services firms in the United States, announced today the results of its Brand Research for the Credit Card Industry. This syndicated audit ranks all top-spending television, print, radio, and on-line ads for their “AdPi” (Advertising Performance Index). The AdPi rates Creative and In-Market effectiveness and ‘Brand Value,’ and predicts short-term and long-term ROI.

Phoenix Communications & Brand Analytics has re-engineered the way communications research is conducted. Starting with the traditional linear and silo-like approach to pre-production testing and in-market tracking, the company deconstructed it and put it back together in a new way. The best parts were kept and the obsolete ones discarded. This resulted in an integrated research framework that evaluates advertising while being cost-effective, cutting-edge, continuous, and more comprehensive than anything else available.

“The research is highly sophisticated and multi-dimensional, but the results are presented in plain English,” said Paul Zeman, senior vice president and general manager of Phoenix Marketing International’s Communications & Brand Analytics Division. “With this methodology we are able to compare client responses to their competitors, which ads are more effective and efficient, which ads motivate consumers to respond, and which elements of the advertising drive response.

“For example, our February 2007 Consumer Credit Card Audit for the TV ads measured Highest Creative AdPi: American Express “Ellen Animals: 60,”Zeman continued. For a complete list of results, go to http://www.phoenixmi.com/cba/inthenews/.

The Brand Audit also collects and reports BrandPi, which helps credit card issuers measure progress at influencing the image of their total brand over time. By using AdPi, Phoenix Communications & Brand Analytics has answered these and other important questions for their clients.

“Our credit card clients need to determine the effectiveness of their ad campaigns to develop the best creative, maximize their media investments, and demonstrate a return on advertising investment,” stated Zeman. “Phoenix created an AdPi and BrandPi score to use in the advertising development and evaluation decision process. We used our integrated approach to understand the advertising, including its ROI, over the life of a campaign.”

About Phoenix Marketing International

Founded in 1999, Phoenix Marketing International is one of the fastest growing marketing services firms in the United States (with 2006 pro-forma revenue of $27,000,000) and partner to many of the largest companies in the financial services, consumer package goods, automotive, and travel and leisure industries worldwide. Phoenix also offers advanced advertising and brand measurement along with direct marketing expertise. Phoenix has offices in New York City, Rhinebeck (NY), Somerset (NJ), Detroit, Boston, Salisbury (MD), Chicago, Los Angeles, Tampa and Miami. On January 12th Phoenix acquired a major interest in JZM, a full service healthcare market research company, to serve as the foundation of its new healthcare practice.

Phoenix offers a unique combination of industry expertise, methods and consulting services, combining primary and syndicated marketing research expertise with database analytics and modelling proficiency. Applying this information assists clients in improving profit dynamics of their business.

Author: Array

–$150,000,000 1 month LIBOR + 0.51% class B (2007-6) ‘A’;

— $225,000,000 1 month LIBOR + 1.25% class C (2007-4) ‘BBB+’;

For more information, see the BA Credit Card Trust, Class B (2007-6) and Class C (2007-4) BAseries Notes presale report, available to all investors on Fitch’s corporate site, www.fitchratings.com.

Fitch’s rating definitions and the terms of use of such ratings are available on the agency’s public site, www.fitchratings.com. Published ratings, criteria and methodologies are available from this site, at all times. Fitch’s code of conduct, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, affiliate firewall, compliance and other relevant policies and procedures are also available from the ‘Code of Conduct’ section of this site.

Author: Array

The guidance applies to all banks and thrifts. The agencies developed the guidance in response to recent examinations that disclosed a number of inappropriate account-management, risk-management, and loss allowance practices.

The agencies’ objective in issuing the guidance is to assist financial institutions in conducting credit card lending activities in a safe and sound manner, while meeting the needs of their customers. The guidance outlines the supervisory agencies’ expectations for prudent risk management, income recognition, and loss allowance practices. The agencies carefully reviewed and considered the comments received from individuals, institutions, community groups, and trade associations after publication of a draft of the guidance on July 22. In response to the comments, the agencies made changes to address the following issues:

* Clarify documentation expectations for line increase programs.

* Clarify expectations for over-limit practices.

* Provide guidance for minimum payments and negative amortization.

* Revise the repayment period for workout accounts.

The agencies recognize that some institutions may require additional time to implement changes in policies, practices, and systems in order to achieve full consistency with the credit card guidance. Those institutions should work with their primary federal regulator to ensure implementation of needed changes as promptly as possible.

With respect to income recognition and loss allowance practices for credit card lending, the guidance reflects generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), existing interagency policies on loss allowances, and current Call Report and Thrift Financial Report instructions. The agencies expect continued and ongoing compliance with GAAP and these reporting instructions.

Author: Array

In an effort to combat fraud, identity theft and other security issues, American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa and others created the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard. PCI, which goes into effect June 30, consists of 12 technology requirements (see graphic, page 84) for securing networks and applications, protecting cardholder data, maintaining a vulnerability management program, and regularly validating compliance via a third-party assessment.

For e-commerce merchants, including retailers, payment processors and financial institutions, the standard could make life easier by consolidating what in the past have been a bunch of different security guidelines from credit card companies. However some merchants are ill-prepared to meet the compliance deadline, experts say

The PCI rules apply to retailers, payment processors and financial institutions – essentially any business that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data. The card associations have laid out varying enforcement policies and penalties for non-compliance, depending on the volume of transactions a merchant or service provider processes. The largest players could face up to $500,000 in fines per incident if cardholder data is compromised and the merchant or service provider is not PCI-compliant. in addition, the card associations can cut off non-complying companies’ credit card processing privileges.

The June 30 deadline came as something of a surprise for Jelly Belly Candy Company, admits Gary Praegitzer, network administrator and security specialist at the Fairfield, Calif., candy maker. But the company is in good shape to comply Over the last few months it has used security scanning services from Qualys to find and fix a few encryption-related vulnerabilities – such as making a minor server configuration adjustment to disallow lowlevel encryption settings. But Jelly Belly has not had to make any expensive IT investments to comply with the PCI standard, Praegitzer says.

Jelly Belly is fortunate. For many online businesses, coming into compliance could be costly, depending on the conditions of their existing systems. David Glaser, director of professional services at electronic payment and risk management vendor CyberSource, estimates that as of April or so, the majority of U.S. merchants were only about 30% prepared for a PCl compliance audit. “There can be a lot of work to do,” Glaser says.

Particularly for smaller merchants, PCI compliance might require purchasing security products, such as encryption, access control, and activity monitoring and logging devices. There are also procedural mandates -such as the need to implement formal security policies and vulnerability management programs – that will require IT resources.

Once the security systems and policies are in place, companies will need to submit to annual or quarterly audits by a PCI-certified assessor to validate compliance.

What makes compliance particularly tough is that the retail industry historically hasn’t emphasized security as strongly as other industries, such as financial services, says Jim Cowing, managing director at security assessment firm Digital Resources Group.

“Database encryption is probably the most difficult technical component” of the PCI standard, Cowing says. The most difficult IT administrative component is getting a comprehensive set of security policies in place and documenting those policies, he says.

Over the long term, having a unified data security standard instead of several disparate programs will make life easier for merchants and payment processors. Visa has had its own Cardholder Information security Program since 2001, and MasterCard last year launched its Site Data Protection program. Achieving compliance with the PCI standard covers each of the distinct programs and takes away the headache of separate certifications. “Now they’re all playing from the same hymn book,” Cowing says.

Meanwhile, a number of vendors have announced products and services to help companies achieve PCI compliance:

* Ingrian Networks last week announced a program designed to help merchants comply with the PCI standard’s encryption rules. The program includes an assessment of a company’s current methods for securing data; design recommendations; tutorials for achieving compliance; compliance validation from service provider AmbironTrustWave; and a 30-day trial of Ingrian’s appliance-based DataSecure encryption platform.

Author: Bednarz, Ann

She dutifully paid her bills, exceeding the minimum “whenever I had a little savings.” But when her disability insurance ran out and her pension kicked in, her income plummeted, and she could no longer meet her minimums. During that whole time, she continued to receive solicitations for more credit cards–as many as ten in a day. “I would tell the people, `This is silly, I can’t afford to pay you, and I don’t need more credit,’ but they kept calling.”

Kaliser’s situation is not unusual. Nearly half of all bankruptcies in the United States are the result of medical debt. But the bankruptcy bills the House and Senate passed this spring would make it harder for people like Kaliser to declare bankruptcy–and make it easier for creditors, including credit card companies, to force repayment.

“Whenever we talk about credit card debt, there’s an assumption that credit cards are used to buy a fur coat on the way to the bankruptcy court,” says Melissa Jacoby, a Temple University law professor. “Credit cards are very often used to finance the purchase of medical supplies and medical care and the like.”

Credit card companies increased the credit they extended nationally by 17 percent last year and sent out 3.3 billion solicitations–about a dozen for every man, woman, and child in the country.

“Credit card issuers are brazenly lobbying for new bankruptcy restrictions at the same time their aggressive marketing and lending practices are pushing many families closer to the financial brink,” says Travis Plunkett, legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America. “While the issuers urge Congress to deny families access to bankruptcy relief, their profits are soaring.”

“Why don’t we call on the credit card companies to be accountable?” asked Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, during debate on the Senate bill this spring. “They need to be held accountable for their predatory lending practices.”

Unfortunately, credit cards are often the only available route when medical bills mount. “What we see are people who are barely getting by and can’t pay their medical bills,” says Siana Newman, counselor with the National Bankruptcy Assistance Project. “So they’re putting their food or clothing on their credit card because they’re worried about how they are going to pay the hospital bill. And all of their disposable income goes to pay the doctor or the hospital, or to pay for their prescriptions at the pharmacy.”

I n an effort to filter out abusers of the system, the bankruptcy legislation would create new hurdles for debtors. Those who want to declare bankruptcy would have to go through consumer credit counseling at their own expense. “What the system is going to tell you now is that you can’t declare bankruptcy, you have to go to credit counseling,” says Jacoby. “A credit counselor can look at your case and realize that it’s hopeless, but nonetheless you have to certify that you went to credit counseling before you can declare bankruptcy.”

Opponents of this provision see it as an undue and ill-timed burden. “Right at the point that people are facing bankruptcy for large medical bills, they are going to have to spend a few hundred dollars on credit counseling and travel downtown, or wherever, every week to have a two-hour session on how to manage credit,” says Jim Farrell, an aide to Senator Wellstone. “They don’t have any money, a lot of these people don’t have cars, and it’s just another added expense and hardship at a time when they can least deal with it.” But, he adds, the provision would be “a windfall for the credit counseling industry.”

Once someone has completed credit counseling, they must negotiate the “means test.” Under the means test, no one with an income above 80 percent of a state’s median income can have debt eliminated through Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code, which allows debtors a clean slate–free of debt. Instead, these people must apply for protection under Chapter 13, which forces them to set up a monthly payment with their creditors, regardless of the type of debt incurred.

Author: Matt Olson

Based on total dollars outstanding, bank card delinquencies decreased to 4.65 percent in the first quarter from 4.92 percent in the previous quarter. “Meanwhile, consumer payments on installment loans has been impressive during the past two quarters,” said ABA economist Jim Chessen. “We are back to levels we have not seen in nearly a decade.” Chessen noted that job and income growth in 2003 and early 2004 are now starting to pay dividends. Since January, more than 1 million jobs have been created, and financial obligations relative to disposable income improved.

Author: Array

Despite reports of widespread outbreaks, of general civility New York in 2000 is still rife with nefarious folks who will pick your pocket on the No. 6 downtown train headed to Grand Central Station.

It happened to me, a longtime West Sider, who admittedly was traveling outside my familiar territory (Lesson No. 1: Don’t for a moment be fooled by a woman with a baby carriage acting as a decoy to thieves on an afternoon subway.) Twenty minutes later, I discovered my wallet was missing when I attempted to buy some birthday cards at a shop in the station. Sorry Sis, this year’s wishes will now be “belated.” Gripped by fear and praying I’d left it at my last appointment, I ran to a phone and punched in the number. No sign of a lost wallet there came the deflating reply.

Sprinting to the midtown office of a friend, I knew the race was on. Every minute it took me to cancel my credit cards meant more time for the thieves to do their damage. A call to American Express foiled any fraudulent activity on two cards, but I was too late on the Citibank Visa. According to a customer service rep, the thief had already purchased what I later discovered was roughly $100 worth of transit MetroCards–no doubt, stocking up before the Subway Series. (Lesson No. 2: If you sign up for extra credit-card protection, make sure to follow through and update all your card numbers so the bank can actually help in an emergency.)

That done, I let a wave of sadness rush in and settled for a few days of anguished wonder: Would the wallet (a black-leather Coach model) ever turn up? (“Get real. This is New York,” sniffed the store clerk when I asked whether a wallet had been found.)

Four days later, my new Citibank ATM card arrived in the mail, which I immediately took to my home branch to activate. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that withdrawals from my bank account had been posted after the card had been canceled! Citibank, wanting to become more competitive with its goliath banking rivals, had replaced my “dumb” plastic ATM card with a MasterCard debit card a few weeks earlier. I hadn’t requested the switch, nor had I signed up for the card via those endless pitches flooding my mailbox.

With my blood now boiling, I stopped a banking attendant in a bid for assistance, but was informed that “only the fraud department” could check on the problem. Sitting at a desk in an empty cubicle, I dialed the toll-free number, then waited on hold for 10 minutes to plead my case.

Citibank had initiated the ATM card switch for all its customers because it wanted to “account for a bigger share of our customer’s spending” came the chirpy explanation. Of course, that meant the ATM plastic that was previously worthless to anyone who didn’t know my secret PIN code had been converted to a “smart” debit card easily used to defraud me once it landed in the hands of an unauthorized user. In essence, the Citi that never sleeps made it easier for someone else to part with my money Outrageous, no?

With credit-card fraud costing $15 billion a year now–and projected to go higher via online transactions–couldn’t Citi have weighed the meager gains of paying instantly for a few more groceries against the potential losses and come up with a smarter idea that still protects customers?

Surprisingly the wallet, sans cash, did show up. I’ve chalked up the loss, the feeling of personal invasion and the many hours spent replacing my ID cards to gritty life lessons. But the Citi has failed to safeguard its customers in this case–and I just don’t see the value for them or for me.

Author: Karen Benezra