Low Interest Credit Cards

I hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I also hope your Black Friday wasn’t too hectic (if you participated). Compared to last year, in my opinion the deals this year really sucked, so I didn’t bother getting up before the crack of dawn to go wait in line. However I did make it out to the mall during the afternoon to take a gander and as expected, the sales were not impressive to say the least. I didn’t buy a single thing.

Black Friday: The Online Version
Meanwhile, many others were skipping the stores for another reason… they were doing black Friday online. In fact, since the beginning of the month there has reportedly been a 23% increase in online purchases (according to ReD payment processing). They also claim the increase in fraudulent online activity (or at least, attempted activity) will be 38% greater than last year. And of

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While virtual credit cards have been around for several years, many people are unfamiliar with them. Also known as a substitute credit card, a virtual credit card allows the user to generate a new number for each online transaction. Doing so makes it much more difficult for anyone to steal the number and use it without your permission, simply because each newly generated number is intended for a single use only.

To establish a virtual card, you must first submit an application to a provider that offers this type of program. If your credit card application is accepted, you are assigned a credit limit and given instructions to download software that allows you to generate the new number for each purchase. The software automatically ties the purchase back to your main account so that all of your purchases still appear on one easy-to-read monthly statement.

The single greatest advantage to virtual cards is the level of consumer protection they offer.

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The Credit Card Act of 2009, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in May 2009, has many consumer protections and provisions. The bill was slated to take effect in February 2010, but the House Financial Services Committee recently passed a bill to push the effective date to December 1, 2009. The bill’s sponsors, Carolyn Maloney D-NY and committee chairperson Barney Frank D-MA, wanted to move the effective date up to stop the banks that issue credit cards from squeezing the consumers with interest rate hikes and fees in anticipation of the new law.

Banks Concerned By Revised Timetable

Consumers have been struggling under difficult credit card rules, regulations and increasing rate hikes. Banks complain though that they can’t implement the required changes by the timetable required under the new bill. In

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Tuesday night, PBS’s Frontline aired “The Card Game.” The documentary let loose a flurry of information about the credit card industry, and the CreditCards.com editorial team, along with some friends, were right there to absorb and comment on it during our first ever Twitter-periment.

Over the course of the one-hour show, which you can watch online here, about 170 tweets were broadcasted with the term #cardgame in them. That term, known as a hashtag, let us track people talking about the Frontline piece.

In total, there have been 213 tweets about the topic from 30 different participants since Nov. 23. Joining in the conversation was the CreditCards.com team –  @takingcharge, @jeremymsimon, @connie_p, @mattsnews and @tylermetzger – along with a wide-ranging cast that included @DianeBuxton of WGBH-FM, Boston’s public broadcast station, consumer credit author @marcyesque, finance bloggers @CardAnalysis and @WayTooHigh, and other individuals, including @tigerbeat and @rebornmex. <

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Consumers are having their credit card accounts closed due to a lack of repayments.

Consumers in the UK who do not keep up with required payments on their credit cards or personal loans may see the accounts shut down, new research suggests.

Conducted by Confused.com, the report showed how credit card issuers cited a failure to make repayments as the reason for the closure of more than one-in-five accounts across the country.

However, people in Yorkshire may be having more trouble than most in meeting bill deadlines for plastic products, seeing 13 per cent more cases of credit card companies closing accounts when balances are not settled.


Joanne Garcia, head of credit cards at Confused.com, said: “Credit card users in all regions need to understand how damaging it can be to miss repayments. Read more…