Credit Card Solution

Ah, it’s time to go through the hassle of buying a new car. Maybe you loaned your existing car to a friend and he drove it into a lake. Maybe your old van’s 12 mpg isn’t cutting it anymore. Whatever the case may be, the time has come to haggle with dealers and hope that your chosen vehicle wasn’t made by a retiring employee with a vendetta. Regardless of how it turns out, you may as well get some rewards for your purchase, right?

Most auto dealerships won’t let you purchase a vehicle outright on a credit card (although there are a few exceptions). The fees that they’d be hit with would be high, cutting into their bottom line.

Instead, you can coax many dealers into letting you pay for some or all of your down payment with your rewards card. Auto dealer

Read all post…

Earlier this week I shared my initial observations of PayPals new phone-based credit card acceptance service and how I thought it stacks up against Square, the reigning champion. Overall, I gave PayPal Here the advantage, provided it works as advertised. But there is more that I want to say about business models developed specifically to enable consumers to accept credit card payments.

See, to the casual observer, it may look as if this is precisely the situation that would favor the small, nimble, innovative type of start-up that would be the quickest to enter a brand new industry and take the early lead by default. Moreover, one could say that this is precisely what took place. After all, Square did come out of nowhere and grew like wildfire. Well yes, but Square had a famous founder who was able to attract plenty of capital to get the project off the ground and has since pulled in more than $100 million in funding.

Read all post…

Sit. Stay. Roll over. Now go fetch a credit card with a low-interest rate…

It’s been kind of a quiet week in the news when it comes to credit cards, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it brings the really weird stuff bubbling to the surface.

Plastic for your pet?

You’ve heard of dead people occasionally being offered credit cards. And you’ve heard of dogs being offered credit cards. But this may be a first — a dead dog.

The Observer, the paper of record for Sarnia, Ontario, reported that last week, Kelly Sloan of Sarnia, Ontario, was looking through his mail when he found an offer from Capital One.

“We’re not offering our low long-term rate to just anyone,” the letter stated. But, actually, yes, apparently they were offering the low long-term rate to just about anyone because the offer was mailed to Spark Sloan. S

Read all post…

Almost every week, swiping your credit or debit card at the gas station gets a little more financially painful. Standing at the pump and watching the numbers sail past $50 can be a grim exercise. But it’s a process that’s also far more complex than you might imagine.

Behind the scenes, as you stare at that “authorizing” message on the pump, computers are whizzing and buzzing and talking to each other about you and your credit or debit card. Those conversations could be complicating your financial life.

“I don’t think the average consumer has any idea what goes on behind the scenes when they swipe a card … ,” said Jeff Lenard, vice president of communications for the National Association of Convenience Stores, which represents most gasoline retailers.

Read all post…