Low Interest Credit Cards

You can now make payments through your local brick-and-mortar retailers using the Square credit card reader through your Apple iPhone! Soon available at Apple’s retail stores and official website, the device allows you to plug a retailer’s reader from a retail outlet or online and insert it into the iPhone 4. Once plugged into the iDevice, you will need to download the free Square app from the App Store and employ the offering without entering into contracts or paying monthly fees. Compatible with the iPhone 4, the fourth generation iPod touch and the iPad, the Square credit card reader helps users track sales and taxes and transfer of receipts. No more lines, no more waiting!

Here at Credit Karma, we like to stay in-the-know and on the cutting edge of new and innovative financial tools to help you spend wisely, save more, and pay down debt faster.

Finovate is a conference series forum where the newest and best of financial technology gets to strut its stuff. This year at Finnovate Spring 2011, we discovered some new tools that we want to share with you.

With many new startups focused on payment solutions and smartphone apps, here are several of the “Best in Show” winners as well as the service we are most excited about, listed at the end. Take a look!

Dwolla: Traditionally, you can pay for online goods and services with plastic. With Dwolla, you can pay online with cash, avoiding costs of using your credit card. It also involves the social network; you can pay cash to your friends via Facebook or Twitter. And you can pay using your smartphone. Dwo

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If you own one of three Chase credit cards — the Chase Freedom or Sapphire personal credit cards or the Chase Ink business card — you’re eligible to participate in Chase’s Ultimate Rewards program.

Under this program, you can convert the rewards points you earn with these credit cards into everything from gift cards to home electronics to hotel stays and ocean cruises. The program is free. But as you shop the online home of the Ultimate Rewards program, you’ll find that certain rewards result in a better bargain for your dollar.

You may prefer to turn your rewards points into cash. That’s one way to make sure that you get the most bang for your buck. But if you’d prefer to turn your rewards points into laptop computers or restaurant gift certificates, you’re going to have to do some savvy shopping on the Ultimate Rewards site. It’s the only way to make sure that you spend your hard-earned rewards points wisely.

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Travel for business? Listen up; MasterCard Worldwide and the Hyatt are set to offer you the benefits of the former’s enhanced folio data program. Businesses that use MasterCard corporate cards will be able to access line item expense data from their travel and entertainment activities at more than 12,000 hotels and resorts in the United States and Canada. The MasterCard enhanced folio data program offers you and your corporation high quality, detailed expense data which helps them more efficiently manage their corporate card programs and integrate expense reporting with existing financial systems. This gives you “level 3″ expense data, such as room charges, tax, meal, telephone and business center fees, among other itemized expense details. So join the more than 12,400 corporate clients and tap access to the MasterCard hotel folio data program now!

When a loved one passes on, financial burden can increase the family’s hardship and suffering. With so many life expenses ranging from mortgages to car loans to credit card debt, student loans, and everything in between, it’s a common worry to think about the future of large debts and whether or not that debt is inherited. Before worrying too much over inheriting debt, it is important to understand what actually happens when a loved one passes on and leaves a large debt behind.

So what happens when someone with a large amount of credit card debt dies? Is the debt left behind for their families or surviving spouse to pay off? Is the debt forgiven? Is it settled somehow, along with the funeral arrangements?

The answer is, it really depends.

“Whether you inherit debt or not depends on the state you are in ,” says Assistant Professor Mitzi Lauderdale from the Undergraduate Program Director in the Division of Personal Financial Planning at Texas Tech University.

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