More transparency in credit card applications

According to the annual analysis of credit card applications that have conducted, credit card issuers seem to have improved the digital transparency. Credit card applications of some of the top ten issuers have been examined by the credit card comparison website, and the key components such as APRs and rewards programs were checked out. The website has found that a majority was doing a great job of keeping things out of the fine print, and had improved scores compared to 2010.

The website has evaluated some of the online applications, just like it did the previous year, where it evaluated two non-reward credit cards as well as two rewards credit cards from each card provider. The cards were given a rating on a scale of 10, depending on the clarity of the information in 4 different categories – how the reward points were earned and how they were used, how much of annual fees is being paid, the cost of doing a balance transfer, the cost of carrying forward a balance on new purchases. The points were essentially based on the visibility of this bit of information on the page – if the customers had to read the fine print in order to find all these key components, or if they had to click on a new page in order to get the information on pricing etc.

There is just one issuer who has consistently got a low score year after year and has only experienced a slight drop from 87.9 percent in 2010 to about 87.1 percent during this year. Capital One as well as Bank of America had ranked first and second respectively with top scores of 98.6 percent and 97.9 percent. However, US Bank seems to be considered the most improved issuer as the bank had improved on its score by 32.1 percentage points within a year. They went from 59.3% to 91.4% by making significant changes such as including a huge amount of information on the homepage.

Discover was ranked ninth and Citibank was ranked tenth largely due to the fact that they did not make significant improvements during the entire year. Both these issuers retained the same scores as they had done earlier. The credit card comparison website has stated that the applications were generally very clear on information such as – how to earn rewards, info on purchase APR etc. However, some areas where the issuers could improve were with regard to information related to balance transfer fees, redeeming rewards etc.