The “skip-payment” option is quickly becoming a marketing tool for credit card lenders. It was often available to cardholders who called the credit card company to express concern over making a payment; but now it’s become something that’s literally offered to cardholders by the credit card lenders themselves. The “skip-payment” option is quickly becoming a marketing tool for credit card lenders. It was often available to cardholders who called the credit card company to express concern over making a payment; but now it’s become something that’s literally offered to cardholders by the credit card lenders themselves.

You may start noticing offers in your mailbox, or even receive a phone call from your credit card company, asking you if you’d like to skip a monthly payment.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Having a break from one of your financial obligations? What the credit card company doesn’t voluntarily tell you when giving you the option to skip a payment is how much it’s going to end up costing you to skip it. If you are at all tempted to take them up on the offer, make sure you ask questions to find out exactly how much skipping the payment will cost you- both immediately and over the long term.

Basically, the skip payment offers are giving you the opportunity to accrue more interest, and sometimes- a fee. If you took advantage of the offer and decided to skip a payment, when you got your statement the following month your balance will be higher- even if you didn’t charge anything that month.

Here is what the Skip-payment offer really does for you:

Possible service fee of $25 or $35 (sort of like what you’d be charged if you were late with a payment!) Then, accrued interest is added to your balance. Extra interest may cause the number of months required to pay off your balance to be increased.

If your credit card has a current balance of about $5,000, has a 12% interest rate, and you are paying $100 to the account each month- you can expect to pay $199 to skip your $100 payment. You would be extending the time it takes to pay off the account and your interest costs are increased. If the card company requires a service fee to skip the monthly payment, you’d have to add that to the total cost of skipping the payment, as well.

Still think it sounds good to skip a payment?

The only instance that it would make sense to even consider the skip a payment option would be if you are in a financially dire situation. If you have lost your job, had unexpected medical, vehicle, or necessary expenses of any kind- and if the amount you are paying to skip the payment is less than what your minimum payment would be. You’d also avoid having a hit to your credit report if you weren’t able to make the payment (without using the skip-payment offer).

If you do take the credit company up on their offer to skip a payment, make sure that you are serious afterwards about paying more than your minimum amount due. Doing this will help you get caught back up and eliminate some of the fees you’d pay over the long term.

This article has been provided by Creditor Web. At CreditorWeb.com you can compare over 100 credit cards from multiple banks and apply for credit cards online. Read more…

Credit Card Articles from CreditorWeb.com - www.creditorweb.com

What You Need to Know About Credit Card Debt Settlement Agreements

There are companies all over the country who promise they can get you a great credit card debt settlement, reducing your debt by as much as 50 percent with little to no effort or money. Unfortunately, they’re offering little more than pie-in-the-sky stories that aren’t likely to work out. If you really want to settle your credit card debt, here are some things to keep in mind.

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From Credit Card Tips, Etc.h - www.creditcardtipsetc.com

The Fair Credit Billing Act is a US federal act that protects many important credit rights including your rights to dispute billing errors, unauthorized use of your account, and charges for unsatisfactory goods and services.

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From Credit Card Cool - www.creditcardcool.com

Just when you thought they were going the way of the dodo, more no fee balance transfers offers have reappeared. Thanks to FW for spotting these recent finds from US Bank/Elan. Personal cards with 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months: Baylor Alumni Association Visa Card Professional Bull Riders Visa Card Linux Fund Visa Card Business […]

Just when you thought they were going the way of the dodo, more no fee balance transfers offers have reappeared. Thanks to FW for spotting these recent finds from US Bank/Elan.

Personal cards with 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months:

• Baylor Alumni Association Visa Card
• Professional Bull Riders Visa Card
• Linux Fund Visa Card

Business cards with 0% on purchases and balance transfers for 6 months:

• Woodforest Visa Business Card
• Cambridge Trust Company Visa Business Card
• M&T Bank Visa Business Card

According to the terms of these cards, in order to qualify for the no fee offer, balance transfers must be performed at the time of the application.

This post is from Credit Card Watcher’s Credit Card Deals Blog.

US Bank No Fee Balance Transfer Offers are Back

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From Credit Card Watcher - www.creditcardwatcher.com

[Dave Birch] Well that was dull. I got all excited about this…

Whatever you buy in the shops, you probably pay with a chip and pin card, tonight Newsnight has exclusive evidence that they are vulnerable to fraudsters. The implications could be huge for millions of shoppers. We’ll be asking what are the banks going to do about it?

[From BBC NEWS | Talk about Newsnight | Tuesday, 26 February, 2008]

But it turned out not to be an exciting breach of chip and PIN security, using (for example) liquid nitrogen to extract keys or something similar, leading to “chip and PIN” fraud, but “PIN fraud” as usual. The allegation — which is, as far as I know, wholly true — is that track 2 data and PINs are being stolen from compromised terminals and then used to create counterfeit magnetic stripe cards. Sandra Quinn from APACS, who was being tortured by Paxo (it’s a peculiarly British bloodsport), said — again, wholly true — that ICVV has been introduced from 1st January 2008 to mitigate this particular fraud. For the uninitiated, ICVV replaces the CVV in the Track 2 (equivalent) data stored in the EMV chip. Thus, if a bank host sees a magnetic stripe transactions with the ICVV in it, they know it’s a counterfeit stripe. The ICVV varies from CVV by replacing the PAN Sequence Number with 99 instead of the actual value when deriving the code.

I must point out, in the spirit of shared openness and truth seeking, that we just checked the three cards we could find in our office that were issued after 1st January 2008 and we found that the Barclaycard and the Nationwide card do have ICVV, the other unnamed large U.K. issuer’s card doesn’t have ICVV. So, on balance, Sandra wins!

The guys at Cambridge (who were featured in the programme — I’ll see if I can grab them for a podcast next time I’m in Cambridge) made a number of good points (asking, for example, why cardholder data is sent between cards and terminals in the clear) but in essence it’s the same story that we’ve been tracking here for years. Not that I’m in any way dismissing the real problems that it means for members of the public whose cards details are compromised in nobbled terminals. And Ross’ key point that PINs used to be only used in controlled environments (ATMs) but are now used everywhere and are therefore easier to steal is, of course, unanswerable. The solution is to stop using magnetic stripes, of course, but that looks some way off!

Following on from the programme, and yesterday’s blog posts, I was once again thinking about the difference between tamper-resistant and tamper-evident. As far as I am aware — but I’d be delighted to receive more information on this topic — there is no requirement for EMV POS terminals to be tamper-resistant but they are supposed to be tamper-evident. The always-worth-reading Nick Szabo had a good post talking about tamper-evident technology. He wasn’t talking about smart cards that blow up when you probe them, but the ancient Sumerian equivalent. Along with the tamper evident clay (once you’d baked it, no-one could change it), they developed a kind of virtual tamper evidence. It took the form of two sets of numbers. On the front of the tablet, each group of commodities would be recorded separately. The example Nick gives is that on the front of a tablet would be recorded 120 pots of wheat, 90 pots of barley, and 55 goats. On the reverse would simply be recorded “265″, the total (without categories). The scribe, or an auditor, would then verify that the sum was correct. If not, an error or fraud had occured. Note the similarity to tamper evident seals — if a seal is broken, this meant that error or fraud had occured. The breaker of the seals, or the scribe who recorded the wrong numbers, or the debtor who paid the wrong amounts of commodities would be called on the carpet to answer for his or her discrepancy. So there we go: clay seals for all Shell garages and the problem is sorted!

These opinions are my own (I think) and presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]

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From Business Credit Cards Blog - www.businesscreditcards.cc/creditcards/bcc-blog.htm

Just when you thought they were going the way of the dodo, more no fee balance transfers offers have reappeared. Thanks to FW for spotting these recent finds from US Bank/Elan. Personal cards with 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months: Baylor Alumni Association Visa Card Professional Bull Riders Visa Card Linux Fund Visa Card Business […]

Just when you thought they were going the way of the dodo, more no fee balance transfers offers have reappeared. Thanks to FW for spotting these recent finds from US Bank/Elan.

Personal cards with 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months:

• Baylor Alumni Association Visa Card
• Professional Bull Riders Visa Card
• Linux Fund Visa Card

Business cards with 0% on purchases and balance transfers for 6 months:

• Woodforest Visa Business Card
• Cambridge Trust Company Visa Business Card
• M&T Bank Visa Business Card

According to the terms of these cards, in order to qualify for the no fee offer, balance transfers must be performed at the time of the application.

This post is from Credit Card Watcher’s Credit Card Blog.

US Bank No Fee Balance Transfer Offers are Back

Read more…

From Credit Card Watcher - www.creditcardwatcher.com

The Fair Credit Billing Act is a US federal act that protects many important credit rights including your rights to dispute billing errors, unauthorized use of your account, and charges for unsatisfactory goods and services.

Add a comment | Bookmark in del.icio.us

Read more…

From Credit Card Cool - www.creditcardcool.com

What You Need to Know About Credit Card Debt Settlement Agreements

There are companies all over the country who promise they can get you a great credit card debt settlement, reducing your debt by as much as 50 percent with little to no effort or money. Unfortunately, they’re offering little more than pie-in-the-sky stories that aren’t likely to work out. If you really want to settle your credit card debt, here are some things to keep in mind.

Read more…

From Credit Card Tips, Etc.h - www.creditcardtipsetc.com

[Dave Birch] I happened to be speaking to someone from a developing economy recently, and they said that (and I quote) “it would be a dream to be regulated by the FSA”. What they meant was that however much people might complain about regulation, having some regulation is better than having none, because with no regulation it’s actually more difficult to get a new payment system off of the ground. Customers and business want to see that their payment system is regulated properly (the person from the developing economy said) and that they are dealing with reputable people and not fraudsters. This applies to developing markets in cyberspace as well, which is why the regulation of the virtual payments and banking space is not only inevitable but also not in itself bad (provided, I would argue, that a thousand flowers are blooming, since it’s too early to know what the “best” regime is). This shift to regulation is already happening in Second Life:

In a blog Linden Labs says it will be prohibited to offer interest or any direct return on an investment from any object, such as an ATM, located in Second Life, “without proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter”.

[From Finextra: Second Life cracks down on unregulated banks]

Now, having regulation does not, in itself, stop bad things from happening, as we in the U.K. know only too well: people can still make bad decisions that jeopardise other people’s money…

Gordon Brown defended the temporary nationalisation of Northern Rock on Monday morning amid widespread questions over the government’s handling of the collapse of the mortgage lender.

[From FT.com / In depth - Brown defends Northern Rock nationalisation]

Chris Skinner pointed out the chain of events that led to the banking problems and also notes that their particular virtual environment has stagnated

The former point relates to Second Life losing credibility when they outlawed gambling with the knock-on effect that their banking system crumbled. The latter is indicated by the fact that Second Life grew from virtually no users in 2006 to 12 million in 2008 … but only 1.2 million people use the service regularly (in the past 60 days) and this number is declining.

[From The FinanSer: ING closes down Our Virtual Holland in Second Life]

The number of people in virtual worlds overall continues to rise, though, and those of us in the payment business who have time to look at them continue to find new trends, new learning and new ideas. Look, for example, at what MindArk is doing with Entropia, where they hope to get 150 million users from around the world. Marco Behrmann, their CEO, says that

Entropia Universe utilizes a “real cash economy”, which means that the internal Entropia Universe economy is linked to the real world economy. This is achieved using a virtual currency called the Project Entropia Dollar (PED), which has a fixed exchange rate, guaranteed by MindArk, to the US Dollar, where 10 PED equals 1 USD. By enabling this kind of currency exchange, both to and from Entropia Universe, a participant has the opportunity to earn real money while in essence partaking in an online computer game.

Real currency is entered into Entropia Universe using mainly credit cards and pre-paid cards. The virtual PED currency may then be exchanged back into real world currency using either a direct bank transfer, or the Entropia Universe Cash Card, which essentially is an ATM card that can be loaded with PED from inside the Entropia Universe and used to instantaneously withdraw real funds according to the exchange rate mentioned above, from over 1 million ATM machines worldwide.

As for the numbers, he’s a little less forthcoming. Entropia has some 595,000 registered accountd. he says that “almost everyone” takes part in the economy as many activities have some cost associated. The number of people depositing compared to the non-depositors is a “business secret”. However, some 110,000,000 PEDs (ie, more than a million of that other virtual currency, the U.S. dollar) were deposited last year into Entropia Universe.

One particular area interests me greatly and that is that there are issues around identity and authentication in virtual worlds that have direct relevance to our customers future businesses. At a seminar I gave recently I talked about the difference between phishing for bank details and phishing for WoW accounts, pointing out the peverse nature of the situation whereby as a customer I’m not that bothered about phishing because if my bank account is hacked by Eastern European fraudsters then Barclays will give me the money back whereas if my WoW account is hacked by Eastern European fraudsters then Blizzard won’t give me my magic sword back. So therefore I might be prepared to pay for 2FA in WoW but not in WoB (World of Barclays). It’s actually in everyone’s interest to come up with a better solution that, I would argue, works for both. It’s an immediate win-win because of the size of the problem. John Smedley, the Sony Station Exchange CEO, talked about the overlap with payments. He said

They use a credit card –sometimes stolen, sometimes not – to buy an account key. They use the account for a month, and then they call the credit card company and charge it back. We have suffered nearly a million dollars just in fines over the past six months; it’s getting extremely expensive for us. What’s happening is that when they do this all the time, the credit card companies come back to us and say “You have a higher than normal chargeback rate, therefore we’ll charge you fines on top of that.”

This is true for World of Warcraft payments too. What this seems to indicate to me is that entrepreneurs might be better advised to find a workable 2FA solution for WoW and then take that same solution into banking where it can then be tied to payments. As an aside, if you have nothing better to do you might find it diverting to listen to Episode Five of The Banking 2.0 Podcast, brought to you by the nice people from Voices in Business, which features yours truly talking about virtual worlds and virtual banking.

These opinions are my own (I think) and presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]

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From Digital Money Blog - digitaldebateblogs.typepad.com