Discover Financial Services will refund $200 million to customers and pay a $14 million fine as part of a new settlement that targets non-credit card financial marketing. The settlement comes after Capital One settled over a program that sold payment protection insurance to its customers.
Regulators allege that Discover encouraged enrolling card members into costly programs that it purported were free to use. Some of these services include credit monitoring and payment protection. Credit...
Better known for coupons than credit cards, internet discount company Groupon announced a new service to process mobile payments. The company says it will seek to develop a system that charges the "lowest rates in today's marketplace".
Groupon will launch with an audio jack card reader similar to current Apple products. The phone jack product is free - allowing merchants to start using the service with no out of pocket costs. For customers who want a stepped up product in the form of a full...
Americans are turning away from banks and turning to quasi-banking services. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), nearly 12 million Americans are managing their money without the help of a banking institution. This is up one-half of one percent from 2009 to 8.2% of all American households.
Those who turn away from basic banking services are turning to a new form of payment method: prepaid debit cards. The trend, which began primarily with low-income credit and debit...
As many wonder how long the effects of a housing bubble will be felt in the American economy, the losses from years' gone by are still affecting the credit market. Credit bureaus are still struggling to quantify the effect of short sales on consumers' personal finances..
A short sale is the sale of a home at a price below the amount of debt outstanding on a mortgage. To clear their balance sheets, banks are allowing homeowners to sell their homes at a loss to recoup some – or ideally all...
If you ask the American public, the average person is happier with their credit card than they are their mortgage. Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, admitted that the agency is getting fewer complaints about credit cards than were expected when the CFPB was founded in 2009.
Since July 2011, the CFPB has taken in more than 72,297 complaints from consumers in a variety of categories. The Bureau says that it is taking in far more complaints about...
The Federal Reserve announced that it had significantly understated debt balances in the period from December 2010 to July 2012. The central banking organization would revise its data to reflect newer, more accurate data.
According to the release, the Fed is revising its data from December 2010 on with a $130 billion adjustment to $2.708 trillion. The Federal Reserve reports a data point known as total consumer borrowing each month. Revolving balances – primarily credit cards and...
Over the summer, Visa and MasterCard reached a settlement with key players in the retail industry that would amount to $7.2 billion in cash payments and temporarily reduced swipe fees. This week, the National Retail Federation announced its intent to overturn the settlement, stating that it did not go far enough to curtail Visa or MasterCard's anti-competitive practices.
The group said that the settlement would not help retailers. Instead, the settlement allows Visa and MasterCard to...
Credit card wars are heating up across the country. Now more than ever, credit card companies are turning to extended introductory offers geared toward new credit card customers. The new hot trend is in zero interest credit cards.
Credit cards are known for issuing cards with teaser rates - rates that are set to expire after a few months to two years of card ownership. The idea is simple: subsidizing consumers’ purchases may reward a credit card company with loyalty and substantial...
Popular stores like Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and Kohl's have long issued their own credit cards to encourage customer loyalty. Now, with the US economy improving, retailers are issuing more and more credit cards to a broader base of customers.
Data from consumer credit bureau Equifax reveals that credit card lending to subprime borrowers (those with low credit scores) surged 14% from 2010 to 2012. Raw numbers show 13.8 million newly opened credit card accounts at retail stores. From 2011...
New laws, including the infamous CARD Act, make accessing credit cards more difficult for college students. But the new law won't make plastic completely inaccessible - where credit cards have dropped off, prepaid credit and debit cards are picking up the slack.
Prepaid debit cards help fill two voids that credit card companies and colleges hope to fill. For one, colleges want to give their students access to easy spending vehicles. Secondly, universities want to simplify the financial aid...
Credit card companies are finding it easier to obtain the financing necessary to fund consumer credit cards.
Unbeknownst to most consumers, credit card companies do not own the money they lend to their customers. Instead, they borrow it on the open market through bond financing. In some cases, credit card companies even sell their lending portfolios. Investors purchase the packaged debt securities as investments on the open market, and credit card companies exit their debt portfolios,...
The credit card industry is fighting for more share of a smaller pie. Consumers, concerned about their financial futures, have cut back on spending. Now credit card companies are battling one another with better rewards aimed at growing their base of cardholders.
Recent developments in the credit card space have made credit cards even more alluring for consumers. Citigroup is using its weight in the credit card industry to make an appeal directly at consumers with more reward options – in...