Find the best credit card offers online.This holiday season, consumers in the Bay Area and California need to be a lot more discerning when it comes to credit card purchasing. One of the hardest hit areas during the economic downturn, California and the Bay Area have a lot of ground to cover to recover from the effects of the slowdown of the economy. So far, if the figures from TransUnion’s survey is to be believed, Bay Area and California consumers may already be on the right track.
TransUnion, the Chicago based credit reporting agency, recently reported the rate of credit card debt in the Bay Area and California is dropping fast – faster than the rate by which national credit card debts are falling, actually. That is an encouraging sign which may indicate that credit and economic recovery in the area may well be on the way. Delinquencies in the area are also on the decline. Delinquencies are debts that have not been paid for thirty days or more and the decline in delinquencies, TransUnion forecasts, may also continue throughout the next year, 2010. So will credit card debt payments by credit card holders.
As encouraging as the figures from TransUnion are, Bay Area and California credit card holders still have a long way to go. During the month of October, Bay Area credit card holders paid an average monthly bill of approximately $5,700. That’s a lot less than what California credit card holders are paying off but higher than what the rest of the country’s credit card holders are paying. Also, in terms of credit card delinquencies, California remains among the top in the country, fourth in the nation to be exact. California is just behind Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
In San Francisco, credit card holders also have something to celebrate. Visa Inc. of San Francisco is joining the fight against online scammers, a very welcome development for those who use their credit cards for online purchases. Visa is one of the major credit card transaction processorsn worldwide and the company settles a hundred and thirty million credit card transactions on average globally every day. That accounts for 45% of credit card transactions worldwide. This makes Visa perfectly placed to have a major impact in stopping online scammers. So far, 100 unscrupulous online merchants have already been cut off by Visa. These include online companies that offer free trial offers which ultimately turn out to be duping consumers into a vicious cycle of unauthorized charges.
