Banks, the thinking goes, have never met a fee they didn’t like. Yet one credit card charge that has been standard for years—the “foreign transaction” or “foreign currency” fee, which tacks on an extra 3% or so to every hotel stay, meal, or tchotchke purchased outside the U.S.—is slowly but surely being dropped by more and more card issuers. Why?
After discontinuing a security feature that let cardholders generate a one-time use number for transactions last month, Discover Financial Services did an about-face and reinstated its Secure Online Account Numbers program.
A study published by credit card comparison site CardHub.com last week shows that while the Credit CARD Act of 2009 has helped make the thicket of fine print and legalese somewhat easier to navigate, it’s still a jungle out there. The site’s 2011 Credit Card Application Study looked into the application materials that the 10 biggest [...]
Discover Financial Services is discontinuing a security tool that allowed cardholders to request a randomly generated, one-time-use card number they could utilize for online or card-not-present transactions for which they believed their account security might be at risk. Discover says existing security measures are enough to keep customers safe.
While the Credit CARD Act cut down on a lot of the shady marketing practices credit card issuers used to target college students, there are still a plethora of cards out there for the campus crowd, and wading through them can be a chore. We identify some of the cards that offer the best value for students.
Banks are giving cash bonuses of $100, even $200 to people who open checking accounts. New credit cards come with policies that will waive or refund interest to customers in certain situations. Why are we the beneficiaries of such generosity? Mostly, because for banks, offering a helping hand—or at least appearing to do so—is good [...]
