Credit Cards Blog

Your cellphone or your wallet? That’s a question credit card giant MasterCard Worldwide tried to answer in a recent survey of consumers’ attitudes toward using their cellphone to make payments for goods and services. The survey found that 62 percent of respondents who use a mobile phone said they’d be open to the idea of

Not to be outdone by Google, electronic payments giant Visa has announced its “next generation of payments solutions,” saying in a statement that the new digital e-commerce, mobile and social networking options will be just as secure, reliable and easy as the current Visa point-of-sale payments, i.e., plastic in-your-wallet credit cards. The new services, to be

Google News. Google Maps. Google Docs. And now, Google Wallet? Yes, you read that right. The search engine giant has announced a new service that will turn a cellphone into a “wallet,” allowing consumers to forgo their credit cards and instead tap the phone to pay when they shop at bricks-and-mortar retailers and other merchants. The

Would you like a mortgage with your credit card? The combination of the two consumer financial products in one business isn’t new, but the forthcoming team-up of the Discover Card and LendingTree Loans is. Riverwoods, Ill.-based Discover Financial Services, one of the larger U.S. credit card companies, has announced plans to acquire Home Loan Center,

One of the requirements of the Credit Card Act implemented two years ago was that issuers of credit cards had to include a resource for customers who had trouble managing their finances. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling provided a toll-free number to be printed on credit card statements, which consumers can call to find

A local newspaper out of California reports yet another instance of thieves stealing credit card numbers by attaching a skimmer — a device that records credit card data — to gas pumps. Unsuspecting customers would swipe their credit or debit card, only to have the information recorded so it could be used to commit fraud.

Does new credit data show a light at the end of the tunnel? Recent news coming from credit rating agencies, network providers and the country’s major credit card issuers show improvements in a variety of metrics. Moody’s Investors Service reported that charge-offs – the defaulted accounts credit card issuers write off as uncollectible – dropped in March.

A new study released by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Pew Health Group found that credit card issuers are pitching business credit cards to ordinary consumers, a situation that leaves consumers vulnerable to predatory practices. The Credit CARD Act passed two years ago categorically excluded business credit cards, which means that actions like hair-trigger penalty APR

Do credit bureaus have a two-tiered customer service system for helping customers resolve credit report disputes, in which wealthy or well-connected consumers get prompt, preferential treatment while the majority of us get shunted to some automated system processed by a far-off subcontractor? The three bureaus all deny this, but the New York Times’ Sunday edition

Credit card-reform legislation known as the Credit CARD Act turns two years old this month, so the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Pew Health Group conducted a study to find out how well the Act did at reforming credit card abuses and curbing fees and rate hikes. The Safe Credit Card Project issued a two-page report determining