Thousands of Egg Card account holders will have to pay significantly higher rates after a review of customer risk levels was conducted by the company. With just a week’s notice, some customers will now have their APR ramped up from the current rate of 16.9% to a whopping 21.9%, which just about takes the egg card into the territory of a ‘bad credit’ credit card rather than a general purpose one.
Citigroup have quadrupled their UK customer base to 4m with the acquisition of online bank Egg, in a deal which saw them pay £575m to former owners Prudential.
Card issuer Capital One have been strongly criticised for sending out unsolicited credit card cheques to an undisclosed number of customers, with debt campaign group Money Advice Scotland saying they plan to raise the matter with the Banking Code Standards Board (BCSB).
Image-conscious credit card carriers may soon have a dramatic new look in their wallets after 3M announced the development of a totally transparent material that can be used to make credit cards.
Holders of the MyTravel credit card have been warned that they have only a few months to redeem their reward points before February 5th 2007 or risk losing them when their accounts are transferred over to another card.
UK credit card issuer Royal Bank of Scotland is to cancel its credit card cheque system after research among its customers found that there was little if no demand. The bank will not issue any more cheques, and ones already in circulation will not be honoured after October 1st.
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Marks and Spencer Money’s &more card has won the Best Credit Card Provider section in the Your Money Direct Awards 2006.
The &more card was singled out for praise because of its good value rewards scheme, its 0% balance transfer feature, and the ’speed and professionalism’ of the telephone support staff.
Evidence that credit card users are beginning to repay their debts keeps growing, with new figures from Apacs showing that the amount spent on credit cards fell in the first half of this year.
A total of £58.4bn was spent, compared to £60.6bn in the equivalent period of 2005.
Debit cards however continued their inexorable rise in popularity, with spending growing from £88.8bn to £92.5bn, which Apacs said suggested consumers were taking ‘tighter control’ of their finances.
The overall debt held on UK credit cards fell by £251m in May, according to new figures released by the British Bankers Association (BBA).
Britain’s biggest credit card issuer Barclaycard has warned that it could face a total of £1.5bn of bad debt this year, as its customers’ financial difficulties increase.