The Post Office have finally joined most other balance transfer card providers by charging a 2.5% fee for all balances transferred. The Post Office Card presented one of the few remaining opportunities for credit card ’surfers’ to avoid a fee for a 0% introductory deal.
Lloyds TSB and American Express have partnered up to launch a new card featuring a personal concierge service, aimed at people with busy lives and high incomes. The rate is high at 21.2% typical APR, and with a monthly fee of £4.95 it certainly doesn’t appear to be a cheap card to use. Take the monthly fee out of the equation though and the purchases APR is a more realistic 13.1%.
Credit card provider Mint has launched a new prepaid card in preparation for the upcoming festive season, where gift buyers can load a special debit card with between £10 and £250 and have it delivered to the recipient, complete with a personalised message printed on the card.
The latest version of Marks and Spencer’s &more card offers a couple of new deals on purchases, with a 0% deal on purchases extending for a full twelve months, and a special offer of 0% for two years on instore purchases of M&S furniture worth over £1,000.
Card provider Morgan Stanley has revamped its range of UK cards, slimming it down to just 2 products and updating the deals it offers in the process.
The Gold Card has been dropped, while the Platinum Card sees its cashback rate raised to 3% on all purchases made for the rest of 2006 before reverting to 1%.
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.
Halifax have relaunched their popular One credit card with a new low APR of 9.9%, plus 0% on purchases and balance transfers for a full nine months.
The downside is the upping of the balance transfer fee to 3%, one of the largest yet seen.
Supermarket giant Tesco have expanded their finance operations into the small business sector, with the launch of a new credit card aimed specifically at sole traders.
The card, imaginatively called the Tesco Business Card, has an interest free period of up to 8 weeks, a middling interest rate of 13.9% and an annual fee of £25.