PayPal Debuts a Credit Card That Offers 2% Cash Back (bloomberg.com) 149
PayPal is turning to its old nemesis, plastic, to help it expand beyond the digital realm. From a report: The online payments venture is introducing a credit card that offers customers 2 percent cash back on purchases -- one of the industry's highest rebate rates -- with no annual fee. The rewards will appear in users' online wallets and can be spent immediately on additional PayPal purchases or transferred to a bank. The move is part of Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman's effort to transform PayPal from a payments button on websites into a versatile financial tool for everyday use, even in brick-and-mortar stores. He's forged 24 deals over the past 18 months with technology and financial companies including Apple, Visa and JPMorgan Chase, looking to make PayPal ubiquitous in the lives of its 210 million customers. The company already tested the card with some of them.
PayPal Seizes Financial Assets (Score:5, Insightful)
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No. I don't mean recoup fraud. Start an eBay business and get it making more than about $4000/month. You'll find very quickly that PayPal will literally seize about 75% of your money and place it in "Reserve" status. You won't have any access to it for 180 days. In addition, they'll continue to freeze a certain percentage of all your income as your company grows. Need your money back to go on vacation: denied. Buying a house: denied. Think you can get your money back by closing your PayPal account:
Re: PayPal Seizes Financial Assets (Score:2)
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You have no idea what you're talking about. I was doing business for 17 years straight with zero incidents of fraud, charge-backs or any other issues when they decided to arbitrarily declare me a risk and seize my $14,000. Do a little searching; they're doing this to 10s of thousands of people all day every day.
Within a few years, cryptocurrencies will make them completely obsolete. Personally, I believe PayPal is seizing assets to bolster their finances on paper for investors.
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There's reasons why I don't often use Paypal to receive money and never leave money in my account. It would probably be easier to use it more and leave some there, just as it would probably be easier to give Paypal my banking information, but I don't trust them.
Re:PayPal Seizes Financial Assets (Score:4, Interesting)
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They've been a bank for the last 17 years. The bank traded under the name "x.com", and was recently renamed when Elon purchased the name. They were FDIC insured as a bank until 2015 when they opted out after being spun off from eBay. Most customer accounts were considered "money market" accounts, and weren't insured, which is why they didn't offer any protections a normal bank does. Business accounts could setup a savings deposit which was insured, but they did make it difficult enough to do that most di
Re:PayPal Seizes Financial Assets (Score:5, Interesting)
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Exactly.
Fuck PayPal. Them and the horse they rode in on.
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I have a Pentagon Federal Access America checking account and a 1.2% cash-back Power Cash Rewards VISA. Because I have Pentagon Federal Credit Union's high-dividend (relatively-speaking) Access America checking product, their Power Cash Rewards VISA pays me 2% cash-back instead of the standard 1.2% rate.
Pentagon Federal Credit Union is definitely not PayPal.
*Overly-verbose statements of products I personally use are not endorsements.
PayPal issues Credit Cards (Score:2)
PayPal issues credit cards, pays interest on balance... but still isn't (regulated as) a bank (in North America.)
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from what I understand JP Morgan / Visa issue the card. Paypal just puts its name on it.
Re:PayPal issues Credit Cards (Score:5, Interesting)
>> PayPal is working with Mastercard Inc. and lender Synchrony Financial, the largest issuer of private-label credit cards, on its offer.
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So in other words, Synchrony Financial issues the card. Paypal just puts its name on it.
So paypal has no need to be a bank for this, many non-bank companies have cards with their name on it without being banks. They're just not the ones who are actually issuing it.
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I had really bad experiences with Synchrony administered store card: not taking payment transfer from bank account, then taking payment twice, then not taking following payment.
I might actually prefer if it really was a paypal administered card!
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It's a PayPal-branded MasterCard issued by Synchrony Bank. But yeah, nothing particularly special or different.
Re: This is fantastic! (Score:2, Insightful)
Bigger players can't do this.
Large merchants pay under 2% plus a couple of cents per transaction. Much of that goes to the merchant's bank / underwriter / payment processor, not the card issuer. The issuer makes their money on interest and annual fees.
PayPal can do this because they deposit 2% into a PayPal account and gouge 3% from the PayPal merchant when you use it.
For normal cards to do this, the card issuing bank would need to get at least 3%, which means the merchant would need to pay 5%, which would
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Gouging 3% of 2% means they're still giving you 1.94% cashback, and that's assuming that you don't just transfer the cashback to your main bank account.
Their revenue stream will be the increased use of the Paypal lending itself, so hopefully millions of people will take this card and still not use Paypal and put the corrupt fuckers out of business.
Do they still randomly confiscate your accounts? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Should I also not give people second chances or just businesses?
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According to the Citizens United decission, your statement is redundant.
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Re: I don't know (Score:2)
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"Do they still randomly confiscate contents of your accounts? "
OMG that old crap. They have over 150 million customers, more than the next 5 worldwide banks combined and you still can't forgive the handful of locking accounts for security reasons when people bought things at home and the next day in their vacation 1000 miles away?
Get a grip man.
It was never random.
Goggle locked my account when I used a fucking VPN without leaving my house.
Re: Do they still randomly confiscate your account (Score:4, Informative)
Those of us that have first hand experience with PayPal's bullshit practices don't need to " get a grip ", we KNOW what PayPal does.
Which is why we refuse to use it.
One day you'll wake up to an email claiming your accounts have been frozen for ' security reasons ' and you'll begin the game of how to regain access to them.
Assuming you can. I gave up after two years and just wrote the account off as a loss.
Absolutely will not give them another dime by any means.
Utilize their unregulated services at your own peril, but never claim you weren't warned.
US news only (Score:4, Informative)
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Honestly in Canada you have a lot of other options for cash-back credit cards already, and none of them require getting paypal involved.
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Rogers Platinum Mastercard is 1.75% on all domestic purchases, and 4% on any foreign currency transactions, with no annual fee. If you've done any price comparison recently, you'll see that 1.75% of a basket of items bought in Canada is likely to be more than PayPal's 2% of the same basket of items bought in the USA, and if you decide to cross border shop to save the difference, you get 4% instead of 1.75%
That said, there are other good options. Most of those "category of their choosing" include groceries a
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I am Canadian too, but my question is why using your CC for gasoline and groceries? A full tank is ~50$, a grocery cart is ~150$, I only use my debit card. For a bigger purchase, say 500+, I'll use my CC or put it on my home equity line of credit...
Should I take a 99$ CC like you and start paying everything with my CC and reimburse every month? for a ~2% return? Is it worth the hassle? Especially since they are talking here to let stores charge you 2 or 3% for when you purchase with your CC compared to cash
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What hassle? the credit card is exactly the same as debit for ease of use, and significantly more convenient than cash, but the credit card both gives you rewards, and defers your payment by about a month (so you can earn interest on the money in the mean time). There are literally no downsides and only upsides.
If you use debit instead of credit you're passing up on easy money.
If stores ever start giving a discount for using a different payment method, I'll re-evaluate what the best payment method is, but u
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The downside is if you don't get your payment to them on time every month. I had a stroke once and missed one.
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Set up automatic payments. Mine Congress out of my bank account automatically every month.
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Too bad this news is US only. I have a Canadian PayPal account and the page to sign up is not accessible.
When I hear "WOW!!! Amazing CARD gives you X back and provides Y FREEE!!!" I immediately ask, "who is paying for it"?
If no simple, reputable answer is forthcoming, I assume that I am.
As with all credit cards, the merchant pays fees to accept it. As credit card companies in the US have made it pretty much illegal for a merchant to pass this on in the form of a surcharge, the do so by simply raising prices. So in the end, I'm paying more than 2% to get 2% cash back... However because most people don't
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But the charge for accepting Mastercard is set by Mastercard, not by the card issuer. So the cost to the merchant for accepting the paypal card or another mastercard card.
So no price rises as a result of this specific card..
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1. Do you want to go direct and pay less.
2. Do you want to go through a middle man and pay for it in fees.
Except that number one isn't even an option anywhere. There isn't a single shop that exists in my city that will give me any form of discount for using cash or other low-cost payment methods. As a result I would be a positive idiot not to take advantage of the credit card and at least get the cash back. Yes I agree that they are driving up the prices of everything but as long as the price is the same regardless of which payment method I use I shoyld at least get the benefit from it.
Re:US news only (Score:4, Insightful)
Credit card companies provide convenience. I never have to worry about having the right amount of cash or dealing with change or stupid cashiers. Not to mention they scale to the internet and other transaction scenarios where cash is inconvenient or impossible. That's worth it to me. I think you'd also be surprised at a retailer's attitude in having a stable, audit-able, and secure transaction platform that doesn't require hiring security forces.
Merchants also provide convenience. I mean you could just pick your items up on a dock for cheaper. Are you happy paying that middle man? What about the middle man that shipped the goods? Do you buy direct from the manufacturer? Why aren't you harvesting it yourself?
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Credit card companies provide convenience. I never have to worry about having the right amount of cash or dealing with change or stupid cashiers.
What exactly is the "worry" ? You just pull out cash; more than the amount if you don't have the "right" amount and get change. I worry more about people commiting fraud with my credit card details.
Not to mention they scale to the internet and other transaction scenarios where cash is inconvenient or impossible.
Ever heard of direct bank transfer? Try it. I know, I know : There is more legal protection with a credit card than a debit card or other direct bank transfer. However this is over-blown; in years of using credit cards I have many times got my money back on substandard stuff from the retailer without ever hav
Do the phishers also get 2% back? (Score:3)
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Re:Do the phishers also get 2% back? (Score:5, Funny)
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Tell the Russian GF that if she does not hurry up you will switch your affections to a gorgeous and fabulously wealthy Nigerian princess who keeps emailing you, consumed with desire. I can put you in touch with one or two.
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Must really be a slow news day... (Score:3)
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Or you could avoid carrying a balance.
Credit cards are a horrendous place to keep your debt. But they're a great way to do your shopping. Make sure you pay off the credit card in full every single month. If you also have debt, make sure that's in a low interest bank loan, and never the 2 shall meet.
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Fool. You are going to sink the economy, eliminate your own job and tank every investment you have. Consumer debt is the lifeblood of the American economy.
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Interestingly enough, I didn't even speak out against debt. I just suggested keeping debt in a low interest loan instead of on a credit card.
That said, I maintain zero debt and strongly suggest that others do the same if at all possible (and it is possible for a much larger segment of the population than think it is)
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Cool story bro, does your credit union also have a near ubiquitous online presence and is effectively transforming it's core business into something else? Maybe you want to head over to Breitbart if Slashdot covering an IT finance story somehow is too slow for you. I hear Trump fucked up something again.
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Pay your bill in full every month, automatically (i.e. auto-pay), and you end up paying LESS than those who pay with cash or check, AND it's more convenient.
Win win win, for me.
(This new PayPal one isn't interesting, since there's already the DoubleCash card that's 2% back on everything, and many others that give even more than that for various categories..)
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If you need a "debt consolidation" loan, and it'll take you 3 years to pay it off, that's pretty a pretty fucking dumb way to manage your credit.
The alternative to the debt consolidation loan is to pay off the credit card with savings and have less cash in savings.
Apparently you didn't learn your lesson from filing bankruptcy a few years ago.
My 2011 bankruptcy was the result of being out of work and exhausting my savings in 2.5 years. The mistake I made then was hoping that I would get a new job and kept paying my bills on time. If I had stopped paying my bills, I could have cleared bankruptcy with $5,000 in savings instead of the $25 in checking the day after my bankruptcy got finalized.
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For someone who claims to live within his means, carrying around debt is a big indicator that you're not living within your means.
Being out of work for eight months after the October 2013 government shutdown really hurt my finances when I still had next to nothing in savings after working seven days a week for two years. I had to take out a loan from my credit union to pay the rent when I got my current job three years ago. I paid off that 24-month loan in 16 months. I could have simply paid off my credit card from savings. But there might be another government shutdown in September if Trump doesn't get his damn wall. Alas, I'm classi
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The government was only shut down for 16 days in 2013, not eight months, and federal employees received back pay.
The Fortune 500 corporation that I worked for used the government shutdown as an excuse to lay off 10% of the workforce. The CEO still got a bonus for having a lousy fiscal year. Despite having 60+ job interviews, it still took me eight months to find a new job.
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Because essential government employees, might be furloughed by a shutdown, but they are rarely uncompensated for their work.
When the federal government gets shut down, one-half of the workforce gets furloughed. The other half are designated essential employees who must report to work and go unpaid during that time. If the government shuts down next month, I still have to report to my station whether I get paid or not.
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In other words, you got fired and the government shut down had nothing to do with it
I don't know about Creimer's particular case, but one of the problems with the shutdown was that a lot of government contractors didn't get paid for quite a long time. If the company didn't have enough liquid cash to keep paying employees, they most likely had to fire some until they got paid the money that they were owed. For companies whose main customer is the government, then that's a possible explanation.
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Have you considered the only common denominator in all the failure you have experienced is you?
It's called life. When God hands out lemons, you can either suck it down tequila or make lemonade. I've been making lemonade for years now.
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If you had no savings after two years of backbreaking work [...]
It took six months of unemployment benefits, savings, a credit card and a bank loan to keep me afloat for eight months.
So... you've got no savings again after FOUR years [...]
It took 16 months to pay off the bank loan and 32 months to build up a cash reserve.
Perhaps it's time to tighten the belt a bit and stop wasting money on your pyramid schemes.
I had three options for dealing with the credit card debt:
1) Continue to make regular payments @ 24% APR.
2) Pay off the credit card with savings and rebuild my cash reserve.
3) Get a debt consolidation loan @ 8% and leave my cash reserve untouched.
With Donald Trump threatening to shut down the government ov
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You have basically completely reversed the priorities of these items, and so you will certainly achieve financial ruin.
5) Done. 4) Done. 3) Done. 2) In progress. 1) In progress.
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You have focused on the "fun" things that are of negligible value, while ignoring basic financial common sense that's incredibly important.
I supposed you could call building businesses and stock portfolios fun. I've done both since I was a teenager.
How does it feel being completely terrible at literally everything you decide to do, creimer?
We have different priorities. You want to climb the corporate ladder. I want to own the corporate ladder.
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[....] has little in the way of savings.
What's the value of my brokerage, business and retirement accounts? I'll wait while you pull an imaginary number out of your ass to low ball.
Meanwhile, you brag about making $3/day as a "job."
A revenue stream isn't a job. But thanks for the coffee money!
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So, which is it - are you a moron? Or do you have next to nothing in your brokerage, retirement, and business accounts?
Why would a credit union give someone a $2,500 loan to the pay the rent when that person had a bankruptcy three years earlier, out of work for eight months and a employment contract that doesn't start in 30 days?
Why would the same credit union give the same person a second, larger loan three years later to pay off a credit card without closing the credit card account?
BTW, Neither of these loans are unsecured.
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A shitty studio apartment, a bankruptcy, and a new mountain of debt that you can't get out from under because of your poor planning? Yeah, you're doing a great job.
That's what any scam artist or ambulance attorney is supposed to see — and then move on to the next target. A person with no assets in his name isn't worth the trouble.
First: nothing I've said requires or assumes your goal is "climbing the corporate ladder."
Conventional wisdom says you go to school, get good grades, get a job, get married and have kids, buy a house, work 30 years to build up retirement savings, and, if you're very lucky, you might get to enjoy life. A.K.A., climbing the corporate ladder.
Unfortunately, I've never had a conventional life. What do unconventional people do? Th
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The corporate ladder is a bit out of your grasp.
Depending on which state you file the paperwork, a corporation can be created for as low as a few hundred dollars. The most practical business entity is a limited liability company taxed as a corporation [irs.gov] that files its own tax return.
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For one thing, the bankruptcy court would just tell you "pay off your debs with all the money you have in the bank."
Except that I didn't have any cash in the bank. The assets that I had in my brokerage, business and retirement accounts fell 50% because of the Great Recession. The value of those assets were significantly less than what I owed and weren't worth the trouble for the trustee to liquidate. All my debts were wiped in Chapter Seven. Once the economy turned around, those assets regained their value.
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If you lost 50%, you were in such ridiculously risky investments that you should seek competent professional help from a qualified investment advisor, and stop trying to manage ANY of your investments yourself.
Funny how a stock index can slide 50% downward when the stock market is down 50% and then slide 50% upward when the stock market is up 50%. People who sold their stocks at the bottom got screwed. Those who didn't are doing fine now.
So, gg, creimer - you can declare bankruptcy again 8 years after your previous declaration.
Why? I'll be out of debt in three years, if not sooner.
Maybe then you can blame Trump and his "damn wall" for that one, rather than your own poor decisions and financial choices.
My stock portfolio is now concentrated in dividend-paying stocks and the dividends are reinvested to buy more shares. Since so many of my stocks are trading at historic lows, they're largely immune to the ups and downs of the
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They lack the discipline to pay off their debts and just continue to spend whenever they're not maxed out.
Never mind that I paid off my 24-month loan in 16 months.
Again, you should find some professional guidance, because you're too fucking stupid to understand basic financial practices.
I doubt I'll be able to turn $6K into $30K again like I did when I bought stocks all the way down in the dot com bust.
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So you were heavily in debt to buy these stocks?
Nope. Not sure where you got the idea that I used debt to buy stocks. That's stupid.
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Yes and when you suddenly need that cash in savings, you won't have it. You'll run up against a wall and need to somehow capitalize.
I've kept loans because I wanted cash on hand. I cleared a loan (at 6% APR) at the end of last year, and then had a sudden expense that drained my remaining savings and required $3,500 in cash run as a cash advance at 20% APR off a credit card. It wasn't a good financial situation.
I've been paying about $70/month in interest because I rebuilt my savings account to only $
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Oh my god, you're a 47 year old who recently filed for bankruptcy and thinks he'll be in debt until 50?
I'll be debt free in three years — and the economy will collapse.
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lol, you're not going to debt free in 3 years. you can't even hold down a job for that long. your career is a cycle of dead-end jobs and extended unemployment.
I've been at my current job for three years. Contract doesn't expire for another two years.
Debit (Score:2)
Been doing that for nearly 20 years with my Paypal debit card. Has the advantage that it sends me email every time it gets used too.
I'm almost interested (Score:3)
If you use a 2% card in the long haul, that's likely going to pay for an entire year of your life, just by selecting said form of payment.
Yes, you can argue about how it gets passed on the stores and thus the consumers till you're blue in the face, but none of the places I shop at offer cash discounts, even though they're allowed to, so it's strictly a disadvantage to not do this.
Thing is, I'm really unsure about this offering. If it excludes paypal purchases from the 2% back, then it'd seem to make little sense, since you can otherwise just use an existing 2% back card with paypal.
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The *one* place that I've ever seen routinely give cash discounts is gas stations. (What are those? Only luddites who drive gas cars use those..)
But at least back when I was routinely buying gas, if you INCLUDED the cash back portion, at the cheapest places, it made up the cash discount the vast majority of the time (and was e.g. just as cheap as Arco, which doesn't take cr
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That would require physically going into the building and waiting in line and talking to a real human - sometimes twice, as there are places that have had too many drive-offs and require payment in advance, then if you don't use all the money you need change. For what a gas discount would be on gas, I don't consider it worth it.
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The places I used to go to (have an electric car now), you just paid at the pump with the card.
Trust in PayPal? (Score:2)
I would not trust PayPal for anything important. I have an account with them, but it was only to pay for one thing online, that only accepted paypal. once they started accepting real CC's, I switched to using that. I have not logged into my PP account for years.
skip it. Seriously (Score:2)
And when a good tech company does it, they will make millions off it.
BUT, paypay is doing the SAME BS as other companies. High interest on all with some treats for the idiots.
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Credit card industry is already super-competitive. If this was ever going to happen, so marginal bank or Discover card would already be doing it.
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Someday, one of these tech companies will get smart and offer 7-10% interest on a card for those who are good risk.
Those of us who are good risk generally pay 0% interest. There is nothing tech savvy about this market.
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Someday, one of these tech companies will get smart and offer 7-10% interest on a card for those who are good risk.
Those of us who are good risk generally pay 0% interest. There is nothing tech savvy about this market.
Exactly this. You are a good risk if you do not need to borrow money. If you don't need to borrow money you can pay off your credit card bills in full. Zero interest is paid.
Anyone who is paying a 10% fee to bankers for everything they buy is already a loser if they need to, and a fool if they don't.
ad (Score:2)
Are you sure this was posted correctly? Really looks like an ad.
another (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.citi.com/credit-cards/credit-card-details/citi.action?ID=citi-double-cash-credit-card [citi.com]
CapitalOne (Score:1)
I've had a 2% cash back, zero fee credit card from CapitalOne for about 4 years now.
Push other Cards to 2% (Score:3)
With any luck, this will get enough attention to push other cards to 2% on all purchases. Many will do up to 5% on purchases of selected types (typically gas and restaurants), but are 1% in general. Perhaps this will push them to 2%? I sure hope so!
Remember, credit cards used to give you nothing. Then there were air miles cards and Discover offered cash, which eventually led to other cards also giving cash. So despite all of them essentially using the same back end (Visa/MasterCard), there's a lot of competition between card issuers, so I'm optimistic.
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Another possibility is that they screwing the merchants for the extra money. Discover similarly offers relatively high cash back, but charges merchants higher fees to cover it. Since this is apparently a Mastercard I don't know how that woul
Fuck whoever posted this as news (Score:1)
This is an ad and it's sad that a mod will have the decency to remove this reply but allow shit like this to make it onto Slashdot.
Cashback - deceptive language. (Score:2)
This socalled cashback is nothing more than a discount on purchases when you buy stuff, and 2% is $2 in every $100 - when has that ever mattered to a real person? And actually, why would anybody use a credit card in an age where debit cards are available - or am I missing something? I have a debit card with my bank account, and I know from experience that it works in shops and cash machines all over Europe, in the US and in China. I would have to pay an annual or monthly fee for having a credit card at all,
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I had credit cards with annual fees once. I called up on some cards, and got the fee removed, and the others I cancelled.
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