Credit Card Forum wishes you and your family a happy Thanksgiving!

Despite troubling economic times, it’s important to remember that we all have much to be thankful for. With employment and housing concerns at an all time high, and many of us experiencing the problem first hand, we can still be thankful for all that we do have; friends, family, health, or whatever else you have been blessed with.

Remember that at this very moment you are reading this on a computer… a luxury the majority of the world doesn’t have access to.

God Bless…

Credit and debit card payments have become a beneficial simplified method of payment for consumers, but how about for charities that rely on donations from spare change? With card usage now exceeding cash payments at most stores, customers often no longer have coins to donate when they are leaving a store.

This has led to fewer donations for long time charities such as The Salvation Army which previously relied on this as a main source of donations. But if you have no coins or cash it may no longer be a problem. In the Dallas area The Salvation Army is doing a pilot test using a dozen of their famous red kettles which are now equipped with credit card readers. Simply swipe your card instead.

The transactions will be wireless and encrypted to protect cardholders. The bad thing is that The Salvation Army will have to pay a 25 cent fee plus 2.9% for each transaction. Hopefully if the pilot program is a success and leads to wider use they will be able to negotiate the processing fees to a lower amount, or ideally zero, since they are a charity.

Credit cards were created over fifty years ago, long before there was such thing as the personal computers, the internet, and of course online shopping. The credit card industry has tried adding security codes and using elaborate fraud detection algorithms, but credit card fraud still thrives everyday. Even though the actual cardholder is never responsible for the costs incurred from fraud, the credit card company is.

Visa is designing a credit card with a built-in random number generator. There would be a small LCD screen on the card which would generate an 8-digit pin number which would be used for one transaction. A new number would have to be generated for the next transaction. Therefore the thief could have your credit card information, but it would be useless without having the pin number. Since the pin number would constantly change from transaction to transaction, it would be virtually impossible for a thief to guess it.

Just days ago we reported about a proposal by the financial institutions to set up a program which would forgive up to 40% of consumers credit card debt if they were underwater with payments.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates banking, came back and said:

The agency does not consider any plan that defers the timely recognition of loss as prudent, and any such proposal cannot be viewed favorably by us.

So let’s get this right. Spending over $100 billion to bailout AIG whom spends it on luxurious spa retreats for executives… Good! Spending money on the people who actually pay these taxes, the consumers… Bad!

…So much for our government being by the people, for the people.

Most financial institutions are struggling left and right, but others apparently are not – such as the case with Kazkommertsbank, who has recently announced they will be issuing a diamond inlaid credit card for their richest customers.

The Diamond credit card will have a 0.02 carat diamond embedded in its center. But the $1,000 annual fee only gets you a $50,000 credit limit, a limit that is not uncommon on credit cards in the United States. The card will feature the graphic of a peacock for female cardholders and a winged horse for male cardholders. Borat would be proud.

However this is not the first credit card made of diamonds and gold. The Dubai First Royale MasterCard (pictured above) is by invite only and issued to the VIP’s of the UAE. It looks like the American Express Centurion now has serious competition.

The day after the election, turn on any news station and you will hear all the talking heads trying to figure out exactly how Obama ran what may have been the best presidential campaign in the history of the United States. Of course there are many reasons for the success, but as funny as it sounds, credit cards played a very important role in giving Obama the financial resources needed in order to get his message out there.

Before he even secured the Democratic nomination, the campaign has been focused on small donations. They took a huge gamble and skipped public financing, a move that hasn’t been done by a major party since the option was introduced in ’74. By utilizing the internet, the campaign gathered millions of smaller donations by the time the campaign was over. Many people wouldn’t bother the tedious process of mailing a check for a $5 or $10 donation, but when it was as simple as clicking on a Facebook ad and entering your credit card number, those small donations made more sense to do. The small donations even incorporated contests, such as the one a week before the election; where if a user donated $5 or more with their credit card, they would have the chance of winning a backstage VIP trip to Obama’s rally in Chicago on the eve of November 4th.

When all was said and done, Obama pulled in over $650,000,000 (the final numbers have not been reported yet). Of course money is not why Obama was elected, but in the cut throat world of politics, big money is needed to get your message out there and defend yourself against negative campaigning…. and that big money came from little credit card donations.

Banks advocating debt forgiveness? That’s a line you’d never expect to hear. But in an unusual move, banks have joined forces with consumer advocates to pitch a proposal to the government, where up to 40% of an individual’s credit card debt would be forgiven. The remainder could be repaid over several years at a favorable interest rate. Banks have came to the realization that it will be better to settle the debt for something, then get nothing.

Over 100 of the biggest financial institutions are behind the initiative. If approved, it would start as a pilot program involving as many as 50,000 Americans. The severity of an individual’s financial situation would determine the percentage of the debt to be forgiven.