Mythbusters Banned From Discussing RFID By Visa And Mastercard
Host Adam Savage of Mythbusters tells how Visa, Mastercard, and Discover had the Discovery Channel put the kibosh on an episode that would have revealed just how “trackable and hackable” the RFID chips found in many credit cards are. It’s a telling example of how corporate advertisers serve as the gatekeepers of mainstream media/entertainment:
This 28-Year-Old Wants to Kill Credit Card Use
Alyson Shontell reports in Business Insider:
There’s a tiny 12-person startup churning out of Des Moines, Iowa. Dwolla was founded by 28-year-old Ben Milne; it’s an innovative online payment system that sidesteps credit cards completely.
Milne has no finance background, yet his little operation is moving between $30 and $50 million per month; it’s on track to move more than $350 million in the next year. Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn’t take a percentage of the transaction. It only asks for $0.25 whether it’s moving $1 or $1,000.
We interviewed Milne about how he is building a credit card killer and Square rival from the middle of the nation where VCs and press are scarce.
Keep Wall Street Occupied From Your Mailbox
Presenting a subversive way to strike back at the banking behemoths and credit card junk mailers clogging your physical mailbox, and to generally excise your daily stress and aggression, via a few small stuffed postal packets:
The Banks Of Today, As Predicted In 1969
“The system could eventually make cash entirely redundant.” A prescient episode of the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World from 1969 looks at the novel arrival of computers to the world of banking. The outlook is more complex than mere rose-colored techno-utopianism.
New Russian ATMs To Contain Lie-Detectors, Facial Recognition
“While Sberbank’s technology might strike Westerners as too intrusive, many Russians already assume the government can watch or listen to them when it chooses to.” Andrew E. Kramer writes in The New York Times:
MOSCOW — Russia’s biggest retail bank is testing a machine that the old K.G.B. might have loved, an A.T.M. with a built-in lie detector intended to prevent consumer credit fraud.
Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank’s end.
The machine scans a passport, records fingerprints and takes a three-dimensional scan for facial recognition. And it uses voice-analysis software to help assess whether the person is truthfully answering questions that include “Are you employed?” and “At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?”
The voice-analysis system was developed by the Speech Technology Center, a company whose other big clients…
California Man Pays Off $6,500 Credit Card Bill In Pennies
UPI reports:
MIRA MESA — California man upset with his bank for disallowing his requested refinance said he decided to pay off his $6,500 credit card bill entirely with pennies.
Thierry Cahez of San Diego County rolled 650,000 pennies in plastic, loaded them into crates and drove the lot to his Mira Mesa bank, KABC-TV, Los Angeles, reported.
Cahez was turned away by the bank several times but eventually was sent to a branch with a vault large enough to handle the coins.
Cahez said he opted to pay his credit card bill with pennies because he was turned down for a refinance and for the amount of charges and fees on his credit card, KABC-TV said Tuesday.
Your Credit Card Data Is Worth $1.50
JJ Sutherland discovers that his precious credit card info isn’t so precious after all, writing for NPR:
If you’re like me, you’re slightly paranoid about your credit card data. You’ve taken all the precautions, checked your statements frequently for fraudulent spending, carefully hidden them in a ‘top-secret’ shoe compartment. What, wait, you don’t do that?
Well, your precious data that you protect so diligently is worth, wait for it, $1.50. That’s because, well, all those security precautions you take don’t really do that much, especially against trojans and hackers who you probably don’t do enough to defend against. There are so many stolen credit cards that they come cheap.
Brian Krebs found all this out by creating an account on one site that sells credit card data rock3d.cc.
The trouble is, the minute you seek to narrow your search using the built-in tools, the site starts adding all these extra convenience fees (sound familiar?). For…
Americans’ Credit-Card Debt Surpassed By Student-Loan Debt
In August, an unheralded milestone was passed: Americans now owe more on student loans than their credit cards. Credit-card debt has actually gone down a bit over the last two years, due to increased frugality and companies cutting off lines of credit. College-loan debt, on the other hand, keeps rising and rising…towards a trillion dollars, the Wall Street Journal reports:
Americans owe some $826.5 billion in revolving credit, according to June 2010 figures from the Federal Reserve. (Most of revolving credit is credit-card debt.) Student loans outstanding today total some $829.785 billion.
“The growth in education debt outstanding is like cooking a lobster,” Mr. Kantrowitz says. “The increase in total student debt occurs slowly but steadily, so by the time you notice that the water is boiling, you’re already cooked.”
Student Loan Justice, a Washington State-based student loan advocacy group issued a statement on the student-loan eclipse, estimating that media coverage of credit cards…
Can Cellphones Become Credit Cards?
AT&T and Verizon are testing a new feature designed to “supplant more than 1 billion plastic cards in American wallets” – by letting people make traditional credit card purchases using their cellphones!
It seems like a glimpse of the future, but it’s already in place in Japan, Turkey and the U.K., with smart phones simply being waved over a reader to complete in-store purchases. “This is definitely a game-changer,” an analyst told Bloomberg news, saying that already cellphone carriers are “the biggest recurring billers in every market. They are experts at processing payments.” And the concept is already being cheered on by retailers. “We have long argued that real competition is missing from today’s payments market,” one industry spokesperson added.
Plus, the cellphone carriers are attacking when credit card companies are already being reviled for their dishonest disclosures on penalty fees. (Today Forbes cited a new study which shows that some credit…
Debtors’ Prison Returns To America?
Did you know you can be thrown into jail for being unable to pay your credit card bills? Arrest warrants were used to jail hundreds of in-debt people last year in Minnesota, even though owing money isn’t a crime. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reports:
No one had an answer. Uhlmeyer spent a sleepless night in a frigid Anoka County holding cell, her hands tucked under her armpits for warmth. Then, handcuffed in a squad car, she was taken to downtown Minneapolis for booking. Finally, after 16 hours in limbo, jail officials fingerprinted Uhlmeyer and explained her offense — missing a court hearing over an unpaid debt. “They have no right to do this to me,” said the 57-year-old patient care advocate, her voice as soft as a whisper. “Not for a stupid credit card.”
It’s not a crime to owe money, and debtors’ prisons were abolished in the United States in the…
Credit Card Companies Take Spying On Customers To A Whole New Level
I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but credit card companies are scrutinizing our purchases to profile us in ways we may not have imagined possible, such as predicting card users’ divorces, as reported in the Daily Beast:
By scrutinizing your purchases, credit companies try to figure out if your life is about to change—so they’ll know what to sell you.
If you ever doubted the power of the credit card companies, consider this: Visa, the world’s largest credit card network, can predict how likely you are to get a divorce. There’s no consumer-protection legislation for that.
Why would Visa care that your marriage is on the rocks? Yale Law School Professor Ian Ayres, who included the Visa example in his book Super Crunchers, says “credit card companies don’t really care about divorce in and of itself—they care whether you’re going to pay your card off.” And because people who are going through a divorce are more likely to miss payments, your domestic troubles are of great interest…
Screwing The Bill Collectors By Suing
The Dallas Observer reports on a local resident who decided to have fun with his $100,000 debt. Army reservist Craig Cunningham realized that many debt collectors and creditors operate in brazenly illegal ways — and so has made a profitable second career for himself suing collectors and credit card companies:
In the next four years, Cunningham accused debt collectors of misrepresenting the amount he owed. He sued over prerecorded and auto-dialed calls to his cellular phone (a TCPA violation worth up to $1,500 per call). All told, he filed 15 other lawsuits in federal court without the help of a lawyer, earning himself settlements totaling more than $20,000.
Cunningham filed his lawsuit against Credit Management, L.P. in August 2009, claiming violations in the amount of around $200,000. The original bill for Time Warner was for $79.84.
Five Myths About America’s Credit Card Debt
Robert D. Manning was the editorial adviser to the Disinformation-distributed documentary In Debt We Trust (available on iTunes and DVD) and is the founder of the Responsible Debt Relief Institute. He writes in the Washington Post:
They’re yuppie food stamps. They give new meaning to the question “paper or plastic?” And they’re in everyone’s wallet. Americans have nearly 700 million all-purpose bank credit cards, plus nearly 500 million retail store cards — and they have transformed how we live and consume. Today, Americans are more dependent on credit than savings, a radical departure from the last major economic crisis, in the 1930s. Congress’s effort to change that, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act signed by President Obama last spring, will go into effect in a few weeks. But it won’t fix everything. Or maybe not much of anything. Here are the myths that muddle our understanding of how we’ve racked up…
Credit Reform and My New 703.8% Card
Kathy Kristof writes on CBS Moneywatch:
Consumer reporters were all crowing about a 79.99% rate credit card that was launched in response to credit reform a few months ago–collectively horrified that a law designed to cut rates and eliminate sneaky fees was inspiring increasingly abusive bank behavior.
I thought that was about as bad as it gets until I took a close look at the statement for my new Macy’s card, which I had opened with “instant credit” while Christmas shopping. It made that 79% card look like a bargain.
Department Stores National Bank, which issues the card, charges a “minimum interest charge.” On my average daily balance of $3.41, that minimum charge worked out to “an actual annual percentage rate” of 703.80%. (Part of the impact of last year’s credit reform is that the issuer had to disclose that shocker on the statement, while also noting that the card’s normal APR is 24.5%.)
Such…
How Visa Reigns With A Silent Tax
If you’re curious about more credit card shenanigans after reading this article, check out Danny Schechter’s In Debt We Trust which Disinformation distributes on DVD and also via iTunes. Disinfo is currently helping to raise funds for Schechter’s latest film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time.
ANDREW MARTIN writes in the New York Times:
Every day, millions of Americans stand at store checkout counters and make a seemingly random decision: after swiping their debit card, they choose whether to punch in a code, or to sign their name.
It is a pointless distinction to most consumers, since the price is the same either way. But behind the scenes, billions of dollars are at stake. When you sign a debit card receipt at a large retailer, the store pays your bank an average of 75 cents for every $100 spent, more than twice as much as when you punch in a four-digit code.
The difference is so…
The Credit Card’s Newest Trick: 79.9 Percent Interest
Candice Choi writes on the AP via Yahoo News:
It’s no mistake. This credit card’s interest rate is 79.9 percent.
The bloated APR is how First Premier Bank, a subprime credit card issuer, is skirting new regulations intended to curb abusive practices in the industry. It’s a strategy other subprime card issuers could start adopting to get around the new rules.
Typically, the First Premier card comes with a minimum of $256 in fees in the first year for a credit line of $250. Starting in February, however, a new law will cap such fees at 25 percent of a card’s credit line.
In a recent mailing for a preapproved card, First Premier lowers fees to just that limit — $75 in the first year for a credit line of $300. But the new law doesn’t set a cap on interest rates. Hence the 79.9 APR, up from the previous 9.9 percent.
“It’s the highest…
The Card Game: Banks, Credit and the American Consumer
The Card Game is the follow-up documentary to the Secret History of the Credit Card, one of the best documentaries I have ever seen on television. The trailer is below.
Hidden fees, skyrocketing interest rates, bankrupt consumers. FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman investigates the future of the consumer loan industry amidst an ongoing battle over increased government regulation. The Card Game airs Tuesday, Nov. 24 at 9 PM on PBS (check local listings or watch online).
Pay Your Bills on Time? There’s a Fee for That.
In an attempt to squeeze more revenue out of consumers who don’t rack up much debt, Citigroup, Bank of America, and other credit card companies are adding new fees. According to USA Today credit card users are being hit with new “inactivity fees” and fees for not putting enough debt on your credit cards. Consumers thinking about canceling their cards face taking a hit to their credit scores for closing an account.
Other consumers may have no choice – Citibank has been closing some credit card accounts without reason or warning, damaging their customers credit ratings.
I cut-up my credit cards last night.
