Things You Need To Know About Credit Cards and Dining Out

If you use credit cards when you go out to eat, you might want to rethink how you pay for your meals. Recently making headlines was a news story that highlighted the fact that restaurants don’t always follow the specific security procedures they are required to comply with when processing credit card payments from their customers. Below you’ll learn more about potential dangers of using your credit cards.

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

Christmas can be a difficult time to manage your finances prudently. However, there are some obvious but worthy tips that could just save you from financial meltdown:

1.  Don’t spend more than you can afford.

2.  Budget expenditure for your gifts, listing out how much you can afford to spend on each person.

3.  One useful tip for uncles and aunties is to buy gifts for each others children only.

3.  Use a price comparison site to get good deals.

4.  There is some evidence to suggest that we …

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From Credit Card Cool - www.creditcardcool.com

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

For years, it’s been the holy grail for the credit card rewards-seeking homeowner: how can the mortgage be paid with plastic? Now, Amex has answered this question and in so doing, opened the door to the possibilities of massive point accumulation. Amex announced today that Cardmembers can now pay their monthly mortgage payments with […]

For years, it’s been the holy grail for the credit card rewards-seeking homeowner: how can the mortgage be paid with plastic? Now, Amex has answered this question and in so doing, opened the door to the possibilities of massive point accumulation.

Amex announced today that Cardmembers can now pay their monthly mortgage payments with their American Express card on eligible prime loans from American Home Mortgage Corp. through its “Express Rewards Mortgage” program. Cardmembers with qualifying new purchase or refinance loans can enroll at closing by paying a one-time fee of $395 to the lender. It’s expected that an similar agreement with IndyMac Bank is in the works and will be completed this summer.

This follows on the heels of an apparently successful program where condo down payments were accepted by Amex.

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From Credit Card Watcher - www.creditcardwatcher.com

Summary [Dave Birch] Who can’t help be fascinated by Japan. DoCoMo started bringing mobile and contactless together sometime ago — they’ve sold 30 million or so phones with Sony’s Felica chip in them — and use them to provide a mobile purse (EDY). Then they wanted to offer a credit product, but you have to be a bank to offer credit. So they bought a bank and began offering the DCMX credit “card” alongside the purse. Now they apparently want to accelerate retail acceptance of mobile payments, so they’re buying into a retail chain, FamilyMart. Currently, only 140 out of their 7,000 stores accept mobile payments. But from July 10, FamilyMart convenience stores nationwide will begin accepting mobile credit via DoCoMo’s iDâ„¢ platform, thereby enabling users to make payments simply by waving their phones over a reader/writer. So instead of whining about retailers, arguing about fees or trying advertising or whatever, DoCoMo have decided to spend their money in a more effective way to get all 7,000 on board: invest in the retailer.

Technorati Tags: contactless, mobile, payments, retail

This is not the only retail e-money fun in Japan right now. A few days ago, Seven-Eleven there launched their nanaco e-money service. It started rather well: an estimated 100,000 applications were filed on the first day for nanaco cards. The service is currently available at about 1,500 Seven-Eleven convenience stores in Tokyo, with plans to expand to 11,700 stores around the country in May and 1,800 Ito-Yokado supermarkets and 586 Denny’s restaurants starting in autumn. It is available in two form factors, a smart card and a mobile phone. They’re hoping to do a deal with JCB to introduce e-money payment with nanaco cards by the spring of 2009, expecting that more than 60,000 stores will accept the card. I’m sure they’ll make it. In Japan, e-money is not in the least futuristic. Look at some of the results from this April 2007 survey in Tokyo and surrounding prefectures…

Q2: Which of the following electronic cash services do you know about? (Sample size=1,030, multiple answer)

• Suica, Mobile Suica 92.9%
• Edy 85.8%
• PASMO 84.8%
• iD/DCMX 31.1%
• QUICKPay 21.4%
• Smartplus 7.7%
• VISA TOUCH 7.5%
• Other 0.4%
• Don’t know any electronic money services 3.3%

Less than 1 in 30 people don’t know about e-money. Now look at this chart…

Only 8% of people surveyed use e-money less than once a month. Check it out on What Japan Thinks for more details.

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

American Express has a Kudos that few credit providers can match. It seems that they continue to produce rich featured products that have genuine sex appeal. However, there is some debate as to whether they remain competitive?

This question does gain some traction with the American Express Preferred Green Credit Card. Does it compare well with other offers on the market? I have my doubts.

Check out the base features for yourself:

• First year fee-free - $95 Thereafter.

• Get 5,000 …

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From Credit Card Cool - www.creditcardcool.com

Sometimes You Shouldn’t Have to Pay Late Fees

You’ve always paid your credit card payments on time. Then, one day, you get your credit card bill in the mail and you realize that you have been charged a late fee. This merits a phone call to your credit card company. However, before you go demanding a credit on your account, there are some things you need to know.

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

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

Summary [Dave Birch] Why are we all so interested in Japanese e-money statistics? Setting aside that when I say “we”, I of course mean “me”, it’s because of the clues it may contain to the evolution of electronic money in a rich mobile-centric environment. According to the Nomura Research Institutethe Japanese e-money market grew from 180 billion yen in 2006 to 690 billion yen in 2007, including EDY’s 100 billion yen share and Suica’s 50 billion yen share. The market is expected to be worth 2.8 trillion yen in 2011. With the spread of e-money, concerns have been raised that the money supply –one of the elements that the Bank of Japan uses to map out its monetary policy — may not reflect the actual state of the economy, as the money supply data does not include e-money (and nor, I suspect, does anyone else’s, although I’d love to hear from anyone who can prove me wrong).

Technorati Tags: e-purse, mobile

In the Japanese statistics the money supply in March was 80 trillion yen. Of this, only 4.5 trillion yen is currency from small-scale settlements, which is likely to be substituted by e-money. So e-money currently accounts for 180 billion of a 4.5 trillion market (ie, 4 percent). Hence one can only agree with Hideo Kumano, chief economist of the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute Inc, who said that

E-money is not likely to have an immediate influence on the central bank’s monetary policy in the near future.

How different to China, where non-existent e-money in virtual worlds is already, according to the government there, threatening monetary policy.

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

For years, it’s been the holy grail for the credit card rewards-seeking homeowner: how can the mortgage be paid with plastic? Now, Amex has answered this question and in so doing, opened the door to the possibilities of massive point accumulation. Amex announced today that Cardmembers can now pay their monthly mortgage payments with […]

For years, it’s been the holy grail for the credit card rewards-seeking homeowner: how can the mortgage be paid with plastic? Now, Amex has answered this question and in so doing, opened the door to the possibilities of massive point accumulation.

Amex announced today that Cardmembers can now pay their monthly mortgage payments with their American Express card on eligible prime loans from American Home Mortgage Corp. through its “Express Rewards Mortgage” program. Cardmembers with qualifying new purchase or refinance loans can enroll at closing by paying a one-time fee of $395 to the lender. It’s expected that an similar agreement with IndyMac Bank is in the works and will be completed this summer.

This follows on the heels of an apparently successful program where condo down payments were accepted by Amex.

Read more…

From Credit Card Watcher - www.creditcardwatcher.com