Credit Card Report
Financial News Made Easy

Stung by the Credit Card Consumers’ Protection Acts, banks have become extremely creative at finding new ways to squeeze money out of their customers.

Among their favorite tricks: offering you a so-called professional credit card. Beware!

The Federal Reserve Board has limited the amount of money U.S. banks can charge customers who do not pay on time.

Major credit card lenders report that more Americans are paying their loans on time. This may be a sign of economic recovery, or…

Right now someone, somewhere, may be using one of your credit cards — without your permission.

When the Credit Card consumers’ Bill of Rights goes into effect next month (Feb. 22, 2010), banks will be prohibited from using some of the worst unfair practices they have been subjecting their customers to.

That’s why banks have been working hard to dream up new fees…

No law prevents banks from closing down credit accounts without warning.

The new Credit Card Consumers’ Bill of Rights has done nothing to change that.

But when Citibank recently closed a number of Mastercard accounts — co-branded with oil partners such as Shell, Citgo, ExxonMobil and Phillips 66-Conoco — it did so on very short notice. [video]

The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD) is a credit cardholders’ Bill of Right that prohibits various tricks and traps until now used by the credit card industry — including hidden interest rate hikes and exorbitant fees. [video]

As more Americans struggle to pay their bills while banks at the same time take actions to limit credit card debt, national credit score averages are dropping.

If you are in the habit of routinely filing your credit card statements without so much as glancing at the list of charges, you could be losing money without knowing it.

After years of flooding Americans with credit card offers and sky-high credit lines, lenders are sharply curtailing both, just as an eroding economy squeezes consumers.

The pullback is affecting even creditworthy consumers and threatens an already beleaguered banking industry with another wave of heavy losses after an era in which it reaped near record gains from the business of easy credit that it helped create.