Best printers for Home

Best Mixer Grinder

Best wired Earphones

Best 43 Inch TV in India

Best Wi Fi Routers

Best Home Theatre in India

Smart Watch under 5000

Best Laptops for Education

Best Laptop for Students

The Indian <keyword id="22196321" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="credit-card-industry" source="keywords">credit card industry</keyword> is struggling to grow, as new issues slow down on a year-on-year (YoY) basis. Not only has the growth i.e. issuance of new credit cards slowed down, but lenders are also becoming increasingly cautious of the asset qualities, a recent report by Nomura showed. From 19% in July 2024, the growth in the <keyword id="6368202" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="credit-card" source="Orion">credit card</keyword> spendings came down to 13% in August 2024. The year-to-date (YTD) growth has also significantly declined in FY25, currently standing at 17%, markedly down from 28% in FY24. For the fifth consecutive month, the number of new credit cards added to the system remained well below the 1-million, or 10 lakh mark. Around 9.2 lakh credit cards were added during the month, a slight uptick from the 7.55 lakh cards that came into the system In July 2024. However, there is growth in this space nevertheless, with about 10.55 crore active credit cards at present, marking a 15.6% YoY increase. Even the annualised spend per card, or the average amount spent via an annual card during an year grew 1% YoY to Rs 1.87 lakh. But this was far less than the 7% growth annual spends via one credit card saw in FY24. Meanwhile, what continues to burgeon consistently is the outstanding amount on these credit cards, which ballooned to Rs 2.7 lakh crore in June 2024, up from Rs 2.6 lakh crore in March 2024, and around Rs 2 lakh crore in the year ago period. To put this in perspective, pre-pandemic, the total outstanding amount stood at Rs 87,686 crore, which marks a 24% CAGR in this amount, in just a span of 5 years. <h2>Large drops, slowdown to sustain</h2>Even the monthly expenditure per card dropped 2% YoY to Rs 16,000 in August, 2024. Subsequently, the transaction volume via credit cards also dipped to 1.6% in August, along with the total amount of <keyword id="21084888" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="credit-card-spending" source="keywords">credit card spending</keyword>, which fell to Rs 1.69 lakh crore in August, from Rs 1.73 lakh crore in July. Also, there has been a hefty cutdown in provisions made for credit card reward points, which reflects in the quantum of credit card benefits that have been mowed out by companies of late, making credit cards far less lucrative than before. <h2>HDFC takes lead </h2>During August 2024, <keyword id="19895995" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="HDFC-Bank" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="HDFC Bank" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="HDFC Bank">HDFC bank</keyword> added a total of 2.41 lakh credit cards, taking its total tally of active credit cards to 2.19 crore. <keyword id="19900482" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="ICICI-Bank" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="ICICI Bank" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="ICICI Bank">ICICI Bank</keyword> came a second distant, adding 1.45 lakh credit cards during the month, which means that the second-largest credit card issuer now holds over 1.75 crore active credit cards. Axis Bank and SBI Cards also added 1.27 lakh and 1.1 lakh cards, respectively to their repertoire during the month, while the growth numbers at Kotak Mahindra Bank remained largely flat, stagnating the bank's total card tally at 54.13 lakh. This was due to the ongoing ban on the bank due to its weak IT infrastructural issues imposed by RBI in April 2024. If anything, the bank's number of credit cards declined by 61,191 during the month. Even as the festive season approaches, experts think that it is unlikely to make a major dent in credit card spendings, which are expected to see a further slowdown in the quarters to come.

Credit card growth experiencing a slowdown, as borrowers struggle to pay back loans

Lana Linge has $42,000 in credit-card debt, but it's not the giant tab that has her most frustrated.The 29-year-old says she takes full responsibility for her debt. After getting her first credit card in her early 20s, Linge accumulated small amounts of debt but was always able to pay it off. That changed in 2020: Linge struggled with managing her spending on necessities and other items, like clothes, while in isolation, causing her bills to grow. Things got worse after she lost her job this past October, and she eventually depleted her savings to keep up with the payments on her card."I know for a lot of people, they're in debt because of these freak things that are outside of their control," Linge tells me. "The reason that I'm in debt primarily is from overspending, and I don't try and negate that in any way."Overwhelmed, Linge is going through the painful bankruptcy process to discharge the debt. Looking back, she regrets not paying more attention to the details of her card's interest rate. Wooed by the rewards and perks the companies were offering, Linge signed up for a card with an interest rate she says ballooned to over 20%. The growing interest payments meant that even as she worked to get her spending under control, the bills kept growing.Linge's experience may be on the extreme end of America's personal finance journeys, but she isn't alone in her interest-rate woes. Consumers are always looking for deals, and it's easy to be swayed by credit-card companies offering glitzy rewards and points. As Adam Rust, the director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America, told me, issuers are "putting the sizzle before the steak." But many of these cards come with high rates and hidden fees, and by the time consumers realize just what they signed up for, credit-card companies have raked in the profits."Credit-card companies can get away with charging high rates of interest because consumers aren't necessarily paying attention and marketing doesn't focus on that," he said.The average credit-card interest rate is now just over 21%, up from about 15% a decade ago. More importantly, the gap between the interest rate that credit-card companies pay banks that oversee their business and the one they charge you is the widest it has been in nearly 30 years. Even with existing regulations and the recent interest-rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, credit-card companies have the power to exploit consumers, and people with growing debt piles have few avenues for relief. Additionally, as credit-card companies continue to charge high interest rates, more cardholders in debt become delinquent — and that could push the US economy closer to recession."What we're seeing from the data shows a rapidly deteriorating financial landscape for Americans," Bruce McClary, a senior vice president at the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, tells me, "with a lot of people teetering on the brink of severe financial crisis."<h2 id="ddbac9bc-8e83-4317-902e-7a4e1408e665">The squeeze is on</h2>Americans have a lot of debt piled up on their little pieces of plastic. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in August that Americans owed a record $1.14 trillion on their credit cards in the second quarter and that balances increased by $27 billion from the same period a year ago, a 5.8% jump. TransUnion says the average credit-card balance per debtor stands at $6,329, up by 4.8% from a year ago. Most worryingly, according to the New York Fed, the percentage of people who had fallen more than 90 days behind on their payments climbed to 6.4% by the end of 2023, up from 4% at the end of 2022. Austan Goolsbee, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, described those rising delinquencies as "uncomfortably high" and a "warning sign" for the economy.This may be worrying news for average households and the US economy, but it is wonderful news for the credit-card companies. Credit-card issuers make money in a few ways, but one of the most important is interest payments. When a customer doesn't pay off their full balance each month, they pay interest that the credit-card company collects, so increasing interest rates is an easy way to bring in more profit. To better understand the strength of the credit-card industry, look at the split between the federal funds rate — the interest rate at which banks make very short-term loans to each other, which is also used as the benchmark for almost every other type of loan — and the average credit-card interest rate. Data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve indicates the difference between the rates is at a nearly three-decade high, suggesting credit-card companies feel free to charge high interest rates regardless of what the Federal Reserve does with the federal funds rate."We should never lose sight of just how profitable credit cards are," Rust says. "You've got interest, you've got interchange, you've got late fees; credit-card companies are making so much money."The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated in February that major credit-card companies earned about $25 billion in additional interest revenue in 2023 by raising their annual-percentage-rate margins, or the difference between the APR and the interest rate set by banks, known as the prime rate. It also found that major issuers raised the average margin by 4.3 percentage points over the past decade, to an all-time high. Using data on how Americans deploy their cards to paint a representative picture, the CFPB estimated that the margin increase cost the average consumer with a balance of $5,300 more than $250 in 2023. On top of that, the bureau's 2023 report to Congress on the credit-card market said companies charged consumers over $105 billion in interest in 2022, helping boost the profit margin for these companies to 5.9% from 4.5% in 2019.These staggering numbers are made possible by the tactics that credit-card companies use to lure in new customers. Antoinette Schoar, an economist at MIT who coauthored a paper examining credit-card companies' use of behavioral biases to acquire customers, says companies use data to determine a prospective customer's education and income levels and will tend to offer products with hidden fees and high rates to people with lower educational attainment and income. For example, a company might advertise a 0% APR, but the consumer might not realize that that rate can't last forever, leading them to take on balances higher than they can afford to pay off. She says that while the tactics companies use to appeal to certain consumers can lead to high balances and credit-card debt, the companies aren't the only ones to blame — government regulations to prevent this kind of misleading marketing by credit-card companies could force the companies to compete by offering customers a better deal."We need better regulation so that the card companies are competing on the right dimensions and not on increasing convolution or increasing confusion to their customers," Schoar says.<h2 id="a19bffcc-ffc0-46bd-9211-4a8e68d3409d">'The highest credit-card rates we've ever seen'</h2>Until 1978, most states had laws capping interest rates for credit cards and consumer products. But a Supreme Court decision that year allowed banks to charge whatever interest rate they wanted if they were headquartered in a state without a usury law. This inspired a race to the bottom, with states like South Dakota and Delaware doing away with their laws in order to attract more business from banks. The industry ended up with, as David Silberman, a senior fellow for the Center for Responsible Lending, put it, virtually "no legal constraints on the interest rate they charge." Lawmakers have tried to rein in the industry — for instance, the CARD Act, enacted in 2009, required card issuers to notify consumers of interest-rate increases at least 45 days in advance and put restrictions on things like late fees and withdrawal fees. The legislation, however, didn't cap interest rates or rate increases. Lowering the current high interest rates, and the profits that come with them, has become a priority across the aisle. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley introduced a bill in 2023 that would cap interest rates at 18% and impose penalties on companies that violate the cap. "Americans are being crushed under the weight of record credit card debt—and the biggest banks are just getting richer," Hawley said in a statement, adding that "capping the maximum credit card interest rate is fair, common-sense, and gives the working class a chance." Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren brought up the issue during a Senate hearing in May, saying credit-card companies had "grown their profits through interest and fees."The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate in September after holding it steady for over a year, but credit-card holders with high interest rates won't feel any relief off the bat. Michele Raneri, a vice president and head of US research and consulting at TransUnion, told me that's because consumers have to pay off their balances at the interest rate in place when they accumulated the debt, so the lower rate wouldn't apply."It'll take a while for the consumer to realize the benefit of it," Ranieri says.The high inflation of the past few years has also made it easier for consumers to fall into credit-card debt. Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst at Bankrate, described the feedback loop of high prices and high interest rates as "a tough cycle to break." Credit-card companies know what they need to do to maximize profit: If they offer rewards and bonuses up front, they can snag new customers before they realize the high rates they're signing up for. Profits keep rolling in for issuers, while consumers fall further behind.<a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/ayelet-sheffey">Ayelet Sheffey</a> is a senior economic policy reporter on Business Insider's economy team.

Credit card companies are ripping you off like never before

<keyword id="20599258" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-consumers" source="keywords">Indian consumers</keyword> demonstrated a significant increase in their <keyword id="21084888" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="credit-card-spending" source="keywords">credit card spending</keyword> in July this year, marking a 19% increase compared to the same month last year. According to a report released by <keyword id="19945737" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="SBI-Securities" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="SBI Securities" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="SBI Securities">SBI Securities</keyword>, the total expenditure by credit card users across the country reached an impressive Rs 1.7 trillion. This substantial uptick highlights the growing reliance on credit cards for transactions, reflecting broader economic trends and <keyword id="20740758" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="consumer-confidence" source="keywords">consumer confidence</keyword>. The report also highlighted a considerable increase in <keyword id="21118324" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="transaction-volumes" source="keywords">transaction volumes</keyword>, which surged by 39% year-on-year, reaching a total of 38.4 crore transactions in July 2024. This increase in the number of transactions underscores the widespread adoption and usage of credit cards as a preferred <keyword id="20632158" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="payment-method" source="keywords">payment method</keyword> among Indian consumers. "Credit card spending in India increased 19% YoY to Rs 1.7 trillion in Jul'24. The transaction volume during the month was 38.4 crore, up 39% YoY" said the report. The report also noted that among the banks, <keyword id="19895995" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="HDFC-Bank" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="HDFC Bank" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="HDFC Bank">HDFC Bank</keyword> emerged as the leader in terms of transaction volumes, with its credit cards facilitating 9.9 crore transactions during the month. <keyword id="19900482" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="ICICI-Bank" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="ICICI Bank" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="ICICI Bank">ICICI Bank</keyword> followed closely with 7.1 crore transactions, while SBI secured the third position with 6.3 crore transactions. In terms of transaction value, HDFC Bank again led the way, with a total spend of Rs 44,369 crore through its credit cards in July. ICICI Bank and SBI followed with Rs 34,566 crore and Rs 26,878 crore, respectively. The report said "In Jul'24, transaction volumes was led by cards issued by HDFC Bank (9.9 crore) followed by ICICI Bank (7.1 crore) and SBI (6.3 crore)". Additionally, the <keyword id="22988051" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="average-transaction-value" source="keywords">average transaction value</keyword> (ATV) also saw a marginal increase of 1.4% month-on-month in July 2024. This marks the first increase in ATV in ten months, suggesting a shift in consumer behaviour towards higher-value transactions after a period of stagnation. Overall, these figures reflect the growth of credit card usage in India, driven by increased consumer confidence and the convenience offered by credit card transactions.

Indians credit card spending increases 19% YoY to Rs 1.7 trillion in July 2024

Most people have, at some point in their lives, made an <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennial-regret-buying-house-remote-work-travel-airbnb-buyers-remorse-2024-1">"oops" purchase</a> — you buy a thing and almost immediately regret it. In the age of online shopping, such purchases are <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/impulse-spending-retirement-delayed-2024-5">easier than ever to make</a>. They are not, however, easier to reverse. Sometimes, you can quickly cancel an order, but oftentimes, the window to do so is so tight that you end up missing it.I recently found myself in such a situation. I bought yet another inane thing I really do not need that I will not name because it is slightly embarrassing. Before anything had shipped, I reached out to the seller to call the whole thing off. Unfortunately, I was denied. Annoyed, mostly at myself but also a little bit at the seller, I had a sinister thought: What if I file a dispute with my credit-card company? I could try to initiate a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/what-is-a-chargeback">charge-back</a>, say the shipment was taking too long or I'd ordered it erroneously, and maybe get my money back. Perhaps I could even get to at least try the thing I was pretty sure I didn't want, but hey, if it was free. To be clear, I did not do this, and I don't know whether it would have worked. But I seriously considered it. One of the best perks of my credit card — the ability to dispute a transaction to get a refund — had almost turned me into a bit of a jerk. Without knowing the term for it, I'd weighed engaging in first-party fraud, colloquially known as "friendly fraud," an increasingly common phenomenon where customers, accidentally or intentionally, dispute legitimate transactions as fraudulent with their credit-card issuer or bank.A credit-card charge-back happens when a consumer sees something they don't like or recognize on their statement and asks the bank to look into it. The bank then investigates the claim and decides whether to issue a refund — under federal law, a consumer can't be on the hook for more than $50 for an unauthorized charge. The merchant can respond, too, if they have proof that the transaction was fine. The bank plays the umpire and decides what to do with the money — maybe it takes it back from the merchant and gives it to the customer, maybe it makes the consumer cough the money up, after all, or maybe it pays out both parties and eats the cost itself."Charge-backs are a huge problem for many merchants. That's not something they can just sweep under the rug," said Oscar Bello, the chief sales officer at Chargeback Gurus, a company that helps merchants navigate charge-backs and manage disputes.There are plenty of legitimate reasons to file disputes and initiate a charge-back, first and foremost, for a transaction that was made by a fraudster, not the consumer. There are other fair explanations, too — there was a billing error, the product or service wasn't delivered as promised, the transaction wasn't authorized in the first place.Then there are charge-backs that can toe the line, ethicswise, or even tip into fraud by the cardholder. People lie and say they didn't get a pair of shoes delivered, even though they did, or they say the shoes came damaged, even though they were fine or had a tiny bit of damage but were still plenty wearable. Perhaps they cancel a restaurant reservation and dispute the cancellation fee, even though the penalty was listed plainly on the restaurant's website. Or a person paid to have their car fixed up and then said the workmanship was shoddy. In those instances, the customer is engaging in fraud or crossing a questionable line, but it can be hard for credit-card issuers to tell what actually happened. It can be quite the ordeal to trace whether a shoebox shipped in the mail wound up in the buyer's hands, let alone for a bank to decide whether all the work an auto-repair shop did was necessary and good.There's no "silver bullet" for figuring out who's in the right in every instance of a consumer dispute, said Domenic Cirone, the vice president of acquirer solutions at Kount, a fraud-prevention company owned by Equifax. And as much as artificial intelligence is helpful, he added, you often need people to sift through the data and complexities. And, he said, most consumers are well-meaning.Charge-backs and friendly fraud aren't new issues, but they're ones <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/retailers-lost-millions-in-organized-online-refund-fraud-scheme-2023-11">exacerbated by e-commerce</a>. It's a lot easier to say that the sweater you got at the Gap never arrived than it is to claim you bought it at the store and, I don't know, forgot to take it with you or suddenly realized once you got it home that it sucked. A 2023 report from Ethoca, a Mastercard-owned platform that helps merchants handle fraud and disputes, said charge-backs in the US could reach $15.3 billion by 2026, more than double the $7.2 billion in 2019. Much of that is friendly fraud: The report cited a statistic from the data-analytics company Datos Intelligence that 75% of all the fraud digital businesses see is first-party fraud.Beyond the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/retail-enters-new-normal-ecommerce-brick-and-mortar-2022-11">e-commerce explosion</a>, some other factors have made <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/free-shipping-free-returns-online-shopping-companies-charging-expensive-amazon-2024-2">friendly fraud more commonplace</a>. Consumers are increasingly using disputes for service-related issues — a product showed up damaged, or a service wasn't up to snuff. Inflation and economic pressures may also make the prospect of disputing a charge more appealing.What's more, people are constantly <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/banks-cashless-world-disaster-economy-business-fintech-cash-crypto-2022-6?">paying through digital transactions</a> that are really hard to keep track of. Perhaps they <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/subscription-services-forgotten-cost-consumers-payments-2022-6">don't remember making a purchase</a>, or their <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/teen-spends-life-savings-tips-protect-money-2024-3">kid put something on their card</a> and didn't tell them, so they mark the charge as fraudulent even though it wasn't. Last year, I almost committed accidental friendly fraud against an airline because I forgot I'd paid to check my bag and tried to dispute the charge before realizing it."It's really quick and easy to check out, which is great because we love that as consumers. That leads to a lot of transactions," Robert Painter, the vice president of global channel sales at Kount, said. "The old adage, more money, more problems, right? So in addition to that, there's confusion."Of course, what's happening here on the end of consumers is not always confusion — sometimes, it's taking advantage of the system. Kevin, an entrepreneur who asked me to keep his identity protected because he was worried his business partner would get mad at him for talking to the press, has lost thousands upon thousands of dollars and endless hours on what he believes are frivolous and often fraudulent disputes. One of his gigs is selling tickets for a swamp tour near New Orleans. According to Kevin, people who go on the tour have disputed charges because they claim they didn't see enough alligators. Or customers of his auto-transport company, which he recently sold, disputed claims because their vehicles arrived a day or two later than desired or, in one case, because a driver didn't speak "good" English. Essentially, some people are using disputes as a review system, and if they don't give the experience five stars, they tell the credit-card company they want their money back. Kevin has won charge-backs before — he recently succeeded in pushing back against a cancellation claim after customers agreed to move their tour time but then backed out at the last minute. More often than not, however, he loses, and regardless, the whole thing is a huge time suck."Customers now, what we found post-COVID, are very trigger-happy on the dispute system," Kevin said.Kevin is not above using questionable dispute tactics as a consumer himself (he recognizes the irony here). He recently successfully disputed a $200 charge from a golf course after being told he couldn't change a tee time.The ability to dispute transactions is generally a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-card-travel-alert-fraud-detection-american-express-visa-chase-2024-5">nice benefit of credit cards</a> and one that most consumers use as a last resort once they've tried to talk to the merchant (if they can get ahold of them). Still, it's weird that Citi or Amex or whoever ends up playing arbiter in charge-backs because the business incentive is to prioritize the customer over the merchant. It's hard to feel bad for big businesses that might lose money on a transaction that barely registers on their records, but for smaller businesses, this can really be a strain.In some cases, there's a pretty clear line between what is fraud and what's not, what's a legitimate charge-back and what isn't. Your online order never arrived, and the customer-service number never picked up: legitimate. Your order arrived and you claim it didn't: fraud. Right or wrong, many cases never get litigated out to the end, anyway."Not every merchant is equipped to fight," Bello of Chargeback Gurus said.There's some gray area, too. If you place an order and it arrives in 12 days instead of the 10 days promised, you might very well win in a dispute. Is that really fair? Mmm.I do not know whether my dispute on the mystery item would have been approved. (It was some stupid health supplements I saw online, OK?) But I wouldn't be shocked if it did. I've never disputed a purchase before, and my credit-card company would like to keep me happy. I do not think I would have felt particularly bad about initiating a charge-back, either, since <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/supplements-vitamins-bad-or-good-health-2017-8">the supplements industry is unregulated and scammy anyway</a>. That doesn't mean it would have been the most awesome thing for me to do.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/emily-stewart">Emily Stewart</a> is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

One of the nicest perks on my credit card is making me a jerk

Best Credit Cards for Military Members of 2024

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Bilt Rewards, a Wells Fargo co-branded credit card, allows people to earn rewards by paying rent.</li><li>Bilt's core demographic are high-earning young professionals.</li></ul>Wells Fargo may have underestimated just how savvy young professionals could be with a credit card that rewards renters.In 2022, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/wells-fargo-review">Wells Fargo</a>, the San Francisco-based bank, partnered with Bilt Technologies, a fintech startup, to offer a rewards program that incentivizes customers to pay rent with a credit card.For many young renters, the allure was clear: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/bilt-mastercard-card-review">Bilt</a> offered a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/best-no-fee-credit-card">zero-annual-fee card</a> that allowed its users to earn a point for every dollar spent on rent without incurring transaction fees. The only requirement was that customers make five transactions each statement period to earn the points.Customers could also receive points for travel and dining. Those points could then be used for purchases with any of Bilt's partners, such as <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bilt-adds-alaska-airlines-transfer-partner-loses-american-airlines-2024-3">Alaska Airlines</a>, Virgin Atlantic, Hyatt, and Soul Cycle.According to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/wells-fargo-credit-card-rent-rewards-8e380852">The Wall Street Journal</a>, Bilt opened more than one million accounts within the first 18 months.But the return for the bank has yet to materialize.<h2 id="41a0e031-bf66-4b05-bc06-db1e4feed271">A 'generation of young, affluent new customers'</h2>Bilt's demographic is decidedly different from the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/average-american-net-worth">average American</a> — who has a median salary of just less than $60,000, with 49% of them holding onto a credit card balance month-to-month.But a report on Bilt prepared by investment banking firm Financial Technology Partners said the company was reaching out to a "generation of young, affluent new customers."In a February interview with The Wise Marketer, Dave Canty, Bilt's head of loyalty and partnerships, said the company's core demographics are between 24 and 34, with a median age of about 29."The average income," he said in the interview, "is about $147,000, so these are <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-typical-dink-double-income-no-kid-net-worth-retirement-2023-11">high-achieving young professionals</a>."Bilt CEO and founder Ankur Jain said on X that his company was attracting "highly valuable customers" for Wells Fargo at low costs. The average customer is 31 years old and has a 760 FICO score, he said.Kevin and Amanda Smidt, a Miami-based couple, told Business Insider they've been Bilt cardmembers for about a year after they heard about the program on a financial podcast."I've never heard of it, and I was like, 'Wow, that's so smart,' because — especially if you live in a major city like New York or Miami — you're spending a lot of money on rent," Amanda, a 32-year-old business owner and registered nurse anesthetist, said. "I was like, 'This makes so much sense because I have this huge payment every month, but now I'll get points.'"The two described themselves as financially responsible, telling BI they never carry a balance on their multiple personal credit cards, including Bilt."I heard about it on a financial podcast about investing. I'm a responsible person who invests, you know what I mean?" Amanda said.Kevin, who is 33 and working on his fellowship as an orthopedic surgeon, told BI that the card has been fruitful.The couple said they racked up 56,000 points in about six months and transferred them through one of Bilt's programs to turn their earnings into 126,000 points with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/virgin-atlantic-business-class-flight-experience-photos-worth-it-2023-9">Virgin Atlantic</a>. Kevin said they used the reward to pay for three flights, two in business class and one on Virgin's new plane.The husband told BI that he could see the card being beneficial for general use, given the rewards a customer could gain from travel and dining. But for the Smidts, most of the other purchases they made with Bilt were to meet the minimum five-transaction requirement."A lot of the times, that's like a latte," Amanda said. "I just do small purchases to be able to get the points from the rent."Kevin said he hopes Wells Fargo doesn't get rid of Bilt, but Amanda chimed in: "Well, actually, we just bought a house.""Oh yeah," Kevin added, "so we won't be able to use it anymore."<h2 id="52322de8-1296-4a1c-9556-5d6acb37ec6d">A costly program</h2>The Journal reported on Sunday that Wells Fargo was losing up to $10 million monthly to sustain the Bilt program, citing anonymous current and former employees.According to the report, part of the problem is that Wells Fargo may have miscalculated how Bilt customers would use the card.The Journal reported that only 15% to 25% of the dollars people spent on the card were carried over month-to-month, which is crucial for Wells Fargo to generate <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-card-interest-rates-late-fees-are-rising-recession-2023-11">interest-fee revenue</a>. The bank projected that the carry-over would be between half and three-quarters of the dollars spent.Wells Fargo also anticipated that 65% of the credit card purchase volume would be for expenses other than rent. Instead, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/12-million-americans-spend-over-half-paycheck-rent-harvard-study-2024-1">according to The Journal</a>, most purchases are for rent payments despite Bilt's requirement for five transactions per statement to score points.Wells Fargo and Bilt declined to comment on the reported numbers. A Bilt spokesperson told Business Insider that Wells Fargo does not make the numbers publicly available.In an email, a Wells Fargo spokesperson told Business Insider that co-branded credit cards are "one modest piece of the company's overall credit card business strategy, and the BILT credit card is one component of that.""As with all new card launches, it takes <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chase-sapphire-reserve-is-jpmorgans-gateway-drug-2018-2">multiple years for the initial launch to pay off</a> and while we are in the early stages of our partnership, we look forward to continuing to work together to deliver a great value for our customers and make sure it's a win for both BILT and Wells Fargo," the spokesperson said.According to The Journal, the losses have pushed Wells Fargo to rethink its partnership with Bilt, and the bank won't renew its contract, which is set to expire in 2029.The Wells Fargo spokesperson said that "there has been no conversation among decision-makers to exit the BILT agreement. To suggest otherwise is false."A Bilt spokesperson said the Journal's story is an "inaccurate representation of our strategic partnership with Wells Fargo."On X, Bilt CEO Jain did not address the reported losses but repeated Wells Fargo's statement denying the bank's plan to end the partnership once the contract expires.

Wells Fargo may have underestimated just how savvy millennial credit card holders can be

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Visa and Mastercard settled a dispute with US retailers over credit-card swipe fees.</li><li>The settlement could ultimately affect credit-card reward programs.</li></ul>One of the great American pastimes — using your credit card to accumulate points — could be about to change.On Tuesday, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/visa-mastercard-lawsuit-settlement-credit-card-fees-checkout-2024-3">Visa and Mastercard settled with US retailers</a> over a long-standing dispute tied to credit-card swipe fees.The crux of the issue is interchange fees, which networks such as Visa and Mastercard charge merchants for processing their transactions. Under the agreement, which still needs to be approved by the courts, these fees would be lowered and capped for five years.So what does that have to do with your sacred stash of points?Even though the networks set interchange fees, the card issuers (banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America) get the lion's share of the revenue. <a target="_blank" rel=" nofollow" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-26/visa-mastercard-reach-30-billion-swipe-fee-deal-with-merchants">Bloomberg</a> reported that last year, JPMorgan took home $31 billion of interchange and merchant-processing income.Again, you ask, what does that have to do with my points?Well, a good chunk of that revenue is spent by banks encouraging you to use their fancy cards. And the best way to do that is via points and rewards. Cards with better rewards and cash-back economics typically charge higher interchange fees.Which gets us back to Tuesday's settlement. Merchants have to accept all types of credit cards from Visa and Mastercard under an "honor all cards" rule. But now, they'd be able to charge consumers more depending on the type of card they're using.Suddenly, the cash back you get from your Chase Sapphire Reserve doesn't seem as enticing when paying a premium on the bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich at your local bodega.It's not likely that banks will completely punt on rewards. David Morris, a principal analyst for payments at eMarketer, said the card programs were too important for banks to stop engaging those customers."They can make allowances of their own in terms of the kinds of rewards, adjusting the rewards accordingly. These are highly profitable programs, so there is some flexibility here for the card companies to be able to make some adjustments along those lines," he said.Morris acknowledged that some changes in consumer behavior might occur as a result, "but that would discount the levers that these credit-card issuers do have to be able to ensure that they are providing the card value that premium cardholders expect."Merchants, especially retailers, don't seem pleased with the settlement. The National Retail Federation, which represents chains including big-box stores and supermarkets, said it "amounts to pennies on the dollar" toward their costs. And the Retail Industry Leaders Association called it "a mere drop in the bucket."Both trade groups expressed support on Tuesday for the Credit Card Competition Act before Congress, which would require large banks to offer multiple payment networks for processing transactions through their credit cards.While many small businesses already charge an extra fee for those paying with a credit card, David Silverman, a senior director at Fitch Ratings, said most major retailers wouldn't pass the interchange costs directly to consumers."These retailers have been absorbing costs across any number of cost functions," such as labor, he said.It's not yet clear what impact the settlement will have. The agreement hasn't yet been approved, and time will tell how merchants and banks handle the changes.But the points game can be one of fine margins, and a change to interchange fees could have ripple effects for rewards programs.Don't be surprised if it starts taking a lot longer to rack up the points required for your next getaway.Correction: March 27, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated a detail from a Bloomberg report. Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan alone took home $31 billion of interchange and merchant-processing income last year, not that the biggest US banks took home this sum.

Credit-card points might be entering a new era

In mid-March, a scammer in California tried to buy $150 worth of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trying-wingstop-first-time-review-photos-2022-9">Wingstop</a> using my debit card. Aside from being impressed at the sheer size of the order, I was relieved because Citibank, which issued my card, declined the transaction on the spot and alerted me to the fraud. In minutes I was able to shut off my card, heading off any more purchases by the scammers, and order a new card. All's well that ends well.When I went to Buenos Aires in April, I figured I might <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/why-was-my-credit-card-declined">run into a similar situation</a>. Sure, the banks say you don't have to call ahead when you travel anymore, but I assumed I'd still have some purchase flagged as potential fraud, as had happened in past trips abroad. Miraculously, everything went off without a hitch. I don't know how JPMorgan Chase knew that I would spend $200 on Botox in Argentina, but it did. (No, I didn't book my flight on the same card, and whatever, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/botox-injections-fillers-plastic-surgery-gen-z-social-media-filters-2024-5">everybody gets Botox now</a>.)It's great that banks and credit-card companies are getting better at discerning which payments are fraudulent and which are legit. Many people have some horror story about having their credit card stolen or having their own legitimate transactions flagged as suspicious. And it's nice not to have to spend 20 minutes on the phone before a vacation explaining where you're going and when. Credit-card fraud protection is still far from perfect, but there's no denying that the technology is improving. On the flip side, it's also kind of wild to consider just how much financial institutions must know about you to make the right calls.I was curious about how it all works — and, frankly, a little creeped out. So I reached out to some credit-card companies and academics to learn more. Why don't people have to alert their credit-card companies about travel anymore? And, more broadly, just how have banks gotten so good at figuring out what's normal about our spending habits and what isn't?The Federal Trade Commission receives thousands of card-fraud complaints each year. The Nilson Report, which tracks the card industry, says payment-card fraud resulted in $33 billion in losses worldwide in 2022 and $13.6 billion in losses in the US. As such, credit-card issuers and banks are keen to do what they can to spot fraud. They want to keep their customers happy, and, more importantly, they want to stem their losses. In the US, the major credit-card issuers and banks <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/credit-card-lost-stolen-what-to-do">generally have a zero-liability policy</a>, which means that when a customer gets scammed, the organization, not the customer, has to eat the cost.Years ago, whether a transaction went through was based on things like whether a physical card was present, whether you had enough money to make the purchase, and (if the cashier wanted to look) whether your signature on the receipt matched the one on the back of your card. In some cases, the cashier may have even asked for ID or called the bank to verify the funds. We've come a long way from those bad old days by using the same tools that power most innovations: data and computers. Credit-card companies and banks know a lot about us — where we shop, when we spend, and how much we're usually willing to pay for things — and they're getting better and better at turning that knowledge into action. While it's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/generative-ai-exaggeration-openai-nvidia-microsoft-chatgpt-jobs-investors-markets-2024-3">all the rage to talk about newfangled forms of artificial intelligence</a>, fraud detection owes a lot to machine learning, a field within AI that's been around for years. A bunch of data gets dumped into computer systems, and algorithms figure out patterns and relationships. The algorithms create decision trees to predict the likelihood of different outcomes and identify what may be considered normal or fishy. It's not that your credit-card company knows that you, specifically, would blow a bunch of cash on A and not on B — it knows that customers with your profile are in the "likes A" camp and not the "likes B" one."It's looking at what's happening that is very much out of the ordinary for your general behaviors," said Tina Eide, an executive vice president of global fraud risk at American Express. "And when I talk about general behaviors, it is generalized, right? It is not down to the specific purchase or to the specific merchant." Eide added, "The models are evaluating a trillion dollars' worth of transactions a year."The machines know more now than ever. Mike Lemberger, Visa's regional risk officer for North America, said that over the past five years the number of data points people generate with their credit cards has grown tremendously. People are increasingly using cards over cash. And they don't just have a physical card they're pulling out at the store — they've got their card credentials in their Amazon account, Netflix account, iPhone, etc. The more purchases the card issuer can analyze, the more accurate the fraud detection will be."Visa, we don't have consumer information — that's your financial institution that has that — but what we have is this triangulation of all these data points," Lemberger said. "We can create more and better scores, layer on top of that machine learning and AI abilities, and it becomes a much, much more powerful predictor, which we then feed into all of our partners to say, 'Hey guys, if you want to make the best decisions, here's a whole bunch of really good information.'"Visa isn't going to block your card directly, but it'll alert your bank that your purchase looks suspicious or that fraud has been detected at the merchant you're dealing with.This all seemed pretty simple until I talked to Yann-Aël Le Borgne and Gianluca Bontempi, a pair of researchers at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium who <a target="_blank" href="https://fraud-detection-handbook.github.io/fraud-detection-handbook/Foreword.html#authors">work on machine learning and card fraud</a>. They emphasized the vast scale of this fraud-detection technology. Companies and their algorithms are ingesting millions of transactions and creating so many decision trees to categorize certain activities that it can defy human logic, they said. Basically, the computer may be right that your transaction looks funky even if it's made in your home city at a fairly innocuous vendor, or it may be right that the transaction is fine even though it's made in a faraway place — but when humans try to figure out what did or didn't sound the alarm, nobody will really be able to pinpoint why."Machines can consider many more features, and at the end of the day it's not clear if all those features have meaning for humans," Bontempi said. "Humans are used to working with two, three features, at most five features, while machines can work with hundreds of features. So there are really different levels between what a machine can do."There are human-written rules, which are generally interpretable, and there are machine-written rules, which can be a black box. They're more accurate, but they may be harder, if not impossible, for people to reverse engineer. And banks may be using several different algorithms, making this even more complicated. Data scientists are the ultimate decision-makers, but the information they're dealing with is based on highly complex tech. When I explained to experts my somewhat embarrassing wings-versus-wrinkles conundrum and asked what may have triggered one alert and not the other, they offered up different explanations. Eide, from American Express, said that even though I hadn't booked my trip to Argentina with the credit card I used to buy the Botox, something else had probably tipped off the system that I was there. I realized I'd also bought a package of spin classes in Buenos Aires on my phone with the same card. I had also paid for a meal in the city. Lemberger, from Visa, emphasized that it's about all the data and spending patterns and said that given my spending patterns, the Botox likely matched my profile more than the massive delivery order."I hate to say this to you, but at the end of the day, all these data points build personas. Just like in marketing somebody would use personas to market to you, we're using that same technology to protect you," he said. "And the fact is that we use those data points to not just secure you but the whole ecosystem."At some point it occurred to me that the supercomputers that credit-card companies and banks are working with could know more about me than I even know or understand about myself."It's probable that the exact reason why a transaction caused your card to be blocked has no straightforward interpretation," Le Borgne said.I also asked whether there was a big difference in credit-card protections and debit protections and was told not really — maybe banks will be a little more restrictive about credit because they're technically lending you money that's not limited by your actual cash balance. I also asked if companies don't worry about preclearing travel because they don't care as much about losing money to fraud anymore, to which the answer was a hard no."At the end of the day, somebody's got to pay for the fraudulent activity," Lemberger said. Credit-card companies will give you your money back if you're a victim of fraud, but they'll find another place to recoup that money, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-card-late-fees-cap-swipe-mastercard-visa-jpmorgan-rewards-2024-4">just as they always do</a>.Instinctually, I am not a technology-is-awesome person — if the AI really is going to kill us, I feel like we should unplug it. I'm not super freaked out about the privacy stuff, but I also don't love the idea that AmEx and JPMorgan and Citi have me so pegged. But it's cool that companies really are making fraud detection better, especially in a world where fraudsters themselves are constantly getting better. I don't want to be like "Yay, banks!" but maybe here the answer really is a little "Yay, banks!" At least that's the case until the next major data-privacy breach, at which point I will regret everything.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/emily-stewart">Emily Stewart</a> is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Banks have finally fixed the single most annoying thing about credit cards

<ul class="summary-list"><li>US consumers are struggling with soaring credit card debt and rising interest rates.</li><li>Experts said the debt increase is the most concerning for younger adults.</li></ul><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-sales-record-thanksgiving-cyber-monday-online-deals-bnpl-2023-11">Consumer spending</a> helped keep the US economy afloat in 2023, but <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/recession-outlook-economy-consumer-spending-gone-2023-9">some cracks</a> could be starting to show.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-card-interest-rates-late-fees-are-rising-recession-2023-11">Credit card debt</a> is now at record levels, and interest rates on those cards have soared. The result is that delinquent balances on debts, in general, and credit cards, specifically, are skyrocketing, and a rising number of Americans are now trying to find a way out as the US faces a credit card crisis.According to data provided to Business Insider by <a target="_blank" href="https://www.moneymanagement.org/">Money Management International</a> (MMI), a nonprofit credit counseling agency, the number of Americans who sought counseling for their <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-cyber-monday-holiday-shopping-discounts-sales-prices-2023-11">debt soared after the holidays in January</a>.<div type="image" title="Number of people seeking debt counseling and average volume of debt." height="767" width="1079" msid="107915105" hostid="261" sizebytes="39970"></div>While the chart above looks most problematic for people in their 30s and 40s, an age group that touches both millennials and GenX, Thomas Nitzsche of MMI noted they are most worried about people in their 20s, Gen Z and younger millennials.This group represented the fewest counseling cases in early 2022 but has recently effectively matched people in their 50s and only trail people in their 30s and 40s."We're especially concerned with the increase among young adults in their 20s," Nitzsche told Business Insider. "We expect this to continue as student loans come back online, interest rates and balances are elevated, and the cost of living remains high."<h2>The US is facing a credit card crisis</h2>It should come as no surprise that the number of people worried about their debt is rising.According to the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/interactives/householdcredit/data/pdf/HHDC_2023Q4">Federal Reserve Bank of New York</a>, total household debt in the US has risen more than 24% since before the pandemic in 2019 and now sits at $17.5 trillion.Of that total debt, credit card balances are growing the fastest. Americans owe a record-high $1.13 trillion on their credit cards. That total increased by 4.6% in the third quarter of 2023 — <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/consumer-debt-credit-card-balances-fed-loans-mortgage-student-loans-2023-11">the ninth straight quarter with a rise</a> — even before the holidays, and faster than the overall debt growth rate of 1.2% in that period.According to <a target="_blank" href="https://fortune.com/recommends/credit-cards/average-credit-card-debt/">a Fortune calculation</a> using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in Q2 of 2023, the average credit card balance was $5,733 per cardholder, while the average for those who do not pay off their balance every month is much higher. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/credit-card-debt-survey/">According to a Bankrate survey in November</a>, only 49% of Americans carry a credit card balance month-to-month.Americans are also struggling to pay their credit card bills on time more than other types of debt. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/interactives/householdcredit/data/pdf/HHDC_2023Q4">According to the Fed</a>, more than 6% of all credit card balances are in serious delinquency, more than double the rate seen just two years ago and still rising.<div type="image" title="Debts in serious delinquency." height="1336" width="1892" msid="107915107" hostid="261" sizebytes="112286"></div><a target="_blank" href="https://www.jpmorgan.com/commercial-banking/ginger-chambless">According to Ginger Chambless</a>, the head of research for JPMorgan Chase, this represents a shift from mortgage delinquencies to credit cards."In the 2005-2010 period, there was a lot more delinquencies in mortgage debt, which is about 65% to 70% of overall household debt," Chambless told Business Insider. "In recent years, mortgage delinquencies have stayed very low as they are largely locked in at low fixed rates."This can be seen in the chart below. During the subprime housing crisis, from roughly 2007 through 2010, mortgage delinquencies, and hence total delinquencies, rose faster than credit cards and even fell slower after the peak.We are now seeing the same trend in credit cards, with delinquencies rising much faster than overall debt.While this could create a parallel between today's credit card crisis and the mortgage crisis of 15 years ago, there are a few important differences today. Employment is strong and real wages have risen in recent years. Additionally, failing to pay a credit card bill will not likely result in losing your home and the years of equity you've paid into it.Still, the rise in credit card debt and delinquencies could point to cracks in the strength of Americans' spending power.<div type="image" title="New delinquent balances (30+ days), percent of current balance" height="363" width="550" msid="107915108" hostid="261" sizebytes="9442"></div><h2>Interest rates are not helping</h2>What makes the credit card situation worse is that not only is debt soaring, but so are interest rates.The Federal Reserve started hiking rates in March 2022 to get inflation under control. Credit card interest rates, already at their highest level since the mid-1990s, started soaring even higher.<div type="image" title="Credit Card interest rates" height="924" width="1200" msid="107915110" hostid="261" sizebytes="43172"></div>Based on current balances and interest rates, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-card-interest-rates-late-fees-are-rising-recession-2023-11">which have exceeded 30% in some cases</a>, the average American spends $1,140 every year, or about 2% of their pre-tax income, on credit card interest and fees alone.And all of this still doesn't consider the growing "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/buy-now-pay-later-phantom-debt-hurt-consumers-us-economy-2024-1">phantom debt" of buy now, pay later</a> payment plans. Americans are increasingly turning to these plans over credit cards, but we don't know the full extent of this burden on the American consumer since these loans are often not reported to credit agencies.A <a target="_blank" href="https://wellsfargo.bluematrix.com/links2/html/2bfba33d-9769-4756-9db7-cc6a7ac5807e">December report from Wells Fargo</a> found that buy now, pay later balances were about 2.5% the size of credit cards in 2021, up 1,000% from 2019.The use of buy now, pay later soared even more this past holiday season. <a target="_blank" rel=" nofollow" href="https://business.adobe.com/resources/holiday-shopping-report.html">According to Adobe</a>, which tracks online sales, buy now, pay later plans use was up 47% on Black Friday and 43% on Cyber Monday.Many people are confident that the US economy has successfully <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/recession-federal-reserve-interest-rates-cuts-soft-landing-us-economy-2024-2">avoided a recession</a> — although <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/recession-outlook-financial-crisis-economy-federal-reserve-yield-curve-rosenberg-2024-2">some are still worried</a>. But while a credit card crisis may not weigh as heavily as the mortgage crisis of the late 2000s, there are signs that the soft landing could be rougher than hoped.Are you struggling with credit card debt or taking on extra jobs to pay your bills? Contact this reporter at <a target="_blank" href="mailto:cgaines@businessinsider.com">cgaines@businessinsider.com</a>.

Americans are facing a credit card debt crisis

Best Business Credit Cards of January 2024

Worried about your <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/credit-score/what-is-a-credit-score">credit score</a>? Maybe you weren't before, but now that I mention it you may be wondering when the last time you checked it was. Even if you're pretty sure it's fine, the topic is often enough to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/financial-therapist-talk-about-anxiety-money-2023-3">cause a moment of panic</a>, a sinking feeling followed by an "Oh God, what if something's happened?"That little three-digit number is a big deal in our financial lives. It serves as a sort of grade for how you handle money. An A gets you approval for an apartment and a decent rate on your car loan; an F gets your rental application turned down and makes your car insurance more expensive. You might not have even realized it, but your credit report <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-cleaning-up-your-credit-can-help-you-land-a-job-2013-9">could even make a difference in whether you land your next job</a>.The anxiety around credit scores is palpable. It's also lucrative. Credit bureaus, startups, and even one-man operations can make a lot of money by playing into people's fears about their credit. They offer services that monitor credit scores and alert you when yours changes, or they say they can help you repair your damaged credit — for a price, of course. Many of these costly solutions do not work as well as promised or deliver much, if any, bang for your buck."The credit-scoring companies have figured out how to profit on the anxiety of consumers with credit watch and credit monitoring and all of these add-on programs," said Aaron Klein, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank. "When companies find a way to profit off of anxiety, they have an incentive to create anxiety."What these companies won't tell you is that the best things to help ease your credit-related worries are cheap, even free. You can check your credit regularly at no cost from a lot of sources — your credit-card company likely tells you your score, and you can access your report weekly free of charge too. Freezing your credit also doesn't run you anything. It's important to be aware of your credit score, but you don't need to obsess over it — or let marketers convince you to pay for a bunch of stuff you don't really need because you're panicked.Around the time of the Super Bowl, I noticed that the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce was appearing in ads for Experian, one of the big three bureaus responsible for keeping track of everyone's credit scores. I <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kelce-experian-tv-commercials-nfl-taylor-swift-super-bowl-2024-2">decided to write about it</a> and, in the process, created an Experian account. The company has been hounding me ever since. I get near-daily emails that range from run-of-the-mill product offers and "credit alerts" to nerve-racking warnings that my information may have been part of a data breach. When I click for more information, lo and behold, I'm confronted with a paid service. For $25 a month, I can sign up for "Experian CreditWorks Premium," which includes quarterly credit reports, credit monitoring, and identity protection. Once I decline that offer, which is kind of tricky, I can also find an offer to "lock" my credit for $5 a month. It's similar to a credit freeze, which blocks creditors from accessing your credit file, but can also do things like notify you if someone tries to access your Experian credit report. Here's the thing, though: A lot of the services it's offering are already free."There's no reason ever to pay for credit monitoring," said Chi Chi Wu, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. "There's no reason to pay for a credit score or pay for service for the credit score."In Wu's view, Experian is an especially bad offender — not just for its suite of likely unnecessary products but because, as part of its standard agreement, the company makes customers agree to mandatory arbitration, meaning you don't get to sue if Experian has a big screwup later. In an email, a spokesperson for Experian said that the company is "committed to financial inclusion" and that its free membership has tools to help consumers improve their financial health. "Millions of members find value in having Experian as their financial co-pilot helping them improve, manage, and protect their financial profile," the spokesperson said. They did not address the arbitration agreement. But Experian is hardly the only company out there selling credit-related services that drain consumer dollars. The credit-monitoring and identity-theft-protection industry, according to IBISWorld, is worth about $5.4 billion in annual revenue. The growth of the industry makes sense — in this day and age, data breaches are constant, and a fraudulent ding on your credit report or someone opening an account in your name can be an enormous headache. Guarding against that outcome seems like a small price to pay for a lot of people, except that paying any price above $0 may not actually be worth it.A <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nclc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IB_Credit_Monitoring_Arbitration.pdf">2022 brief</a> from the NCLC described credit-monitoring bundles as often "expensive and ineffective" and argued that they failed to meaningfully benefit consumers. It noted that most identity theft takes place in existing accounts, meaning monitoring services that alert consumers to newly opened accounts miss it. They also often fail to catch fraud related to medical services or tax refunds. And even when they do catch identity theft, they do so after the fact."Some people might be like, 'Well, I'd rather pay and not deal with the time,'" Wu said. "But the thing is those products aren't all that effective."A <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-17-254.pdf">2017 report from the Government Accountability Office</a> was pretty negative on the whole monitoring and identity-theft-protection business, too, saying it's just not clear how helpful a lot of this stuff is. The report also looked at identity-theft insurance and noted that while it covered expenses related to dealing with the theft, it generally excluded actual financial losses. While credit monitoring falls into the waste-of-money category, other credit-related services can cross over into potentially predatory territory — for example, credit-repair operations. The idea behind these services is pretty simple: Credit reports often include some mistakes that can ding people's scores. So, for a fee, the companies will dispute a bunch of items in hopes of boosting the score. This may improve people's reports temporarily while the disputes are being investigated, but since the firms are basically disputing anything negative, when they lose, everything goes back to how it was, and the customer is just out more money."They're basically charging people with the false promise that they're going to be able to fix their credit reports and credit scores permanently when they can't," said Sarah Chenven, the CEO of Working Credit, a nonprofit that helps people build credit.Credit-repair companies often target people with lower incomes and people desperate to improve their credit reports and scores. Gen Zers and millennials, who <a target="_blank" href="https://www.creditkarma.com/insights/i/state-of-debt-and-credit-report#average-credit-scores">tend to have lower credit scores</a> than older generations and may not have extensive credit files, may be more likely to find themselves looking at a credit-repair service to get negative items off their reports or at some sort of credit-building service to just help them develop a record. Credit-monitoring companies can really appeal to anyone worried about their credit and identity theft. Some of these businesses also make money by marketing various financial products to people — a well-off boomer might get one type of credit-card offer, a struggling student another.The companies also don't do anything people can't do on their own — if there's an error, you can and should dispute it yourself. In fact, credit-repair agencies can be less effective than the average person at getting mistakes wiped from their credit histories because, as Andrew Pizor, a senior attorney at the NCLC, explained, the law says that credit-reporting agencies have to respond only to dispute letters directly from consumers. Credit-repair businesses try really hard to make it seem like disputes are from consumers, and the agencies try just as hard to sniff out whether that's going on."Most of the letters that you're paying for are going into the garbage," Pizor said. He added that if your dispute letters are going unanswered, you don't need a repair service — you need a lawyer.Federal regulators have gone after several companies accused of playing it fast and loose with the way they approach consumers. In 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau settled with TransUnion over charges related to how it was marketing its products, including credit monitoring, and ordered it to stop deceptive practices. In 2022, it sued TransUnion, accusing it of violating that order. In 2005, it dinged Experian for marketing free credit reports that weren't so free. Last year, the CFPB entered into a $2.7 billion settlement with a ring of credit-repair brands accused of illegally collecting fees for their services. Over a decade ago, the Federal Trade Commission and 35 states reached a $12 million settlement with LifeLock after alleging that it had made false claims about its identity-theft-protection services.These companies and credit-related services aren't necessarily evil. A significant part of the issue is that the ecosystem is a mess. Our credit-reporting and -scoring system is outdated and confusing, and so are a lot of the businesses that have sprung from it. Even the seemingly good products and services out there are a sign of the deep rot at the core of the whole system. Credit-building loans, which are loans designed to help people without much credit history build some, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/research-reports/targeting-credit-builder-loans/">can help people get on better financial footing</a>, even if there is usually some cost involved. Immigrants and young people in particular can benefit.Companies such as Credit Karma that let you access a lot of your information easily and for free make it so your credit score isn't such a mystery. The downside there is that they make their money by giving your information to a bunch of third-party financial products and taking a cut if you sign up for one of them. For consumers, the whole thing feels like a maze. It's tough to separate the good actors from the bad and to understand the trade-offs at hand. It's not always clear what you're signing up for, whether you need it, or what you're going to wind up paying."The credit system and the financial system, and I hate to sound a little preachy, but it's a black box," said Ryan Steckler, a vice president of product and general manager at Credit Karma. "Given that situation, we're in the business of empowering our consumers by giving them access to the same data those financial institutions have."It would be neat to be able to say that some concrete help is on the way, but the truth is we're stuck with some not-so-fun realities around credit scores for the foreseeable future. As screwed up as the system is, it's probably not going anywhere anytime soon, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cash-flow-underwriting.asp">even though there are better alternatives out there</a>.There is this sense of existential dread around credit scores. A negative one can really drag people down. An impaired record makes loans more expensive, makes accessing certain financial products impossible, and may even put your next apartment or job out of reach. Klein, from the Brookings Institution, has recently been conducting focus groups with low-income consumers about their financial knowledge and concerns. He's been shocked at how much credit scores have come up."I was very surprised at the attention to detail folks of more modest income have on the impact of financial products and choices on their credit scores," he said. "The more I thought about it, the more I realized this focus is based on experience. At some point, their low credit score has negatively impacted their lives."Frederick Wherry, a Princeton sociologist who leads the Debt Collection Lab, an initiative focused on understanding debt collection, added: "As soon as we are asked about our credit scores, or in a moment when we can't get something we need or we get it at too high a price, that's when we realize that this thing has been hanging over our heads." It's unwise to bury your head in the sand, ignore your credit score, and hope for the best. But you don't need to obsess over it, let alone spend a bunch of money on it. If you're not in the market for a house or apartment or in need of a new loan, you can freeze your credit for free, meaning no fraudsters can take out a loan in your name. Under federal law, the bureaus have to give you one free credit report a year, and since the pandemic they've been letting people access their reports for free once a week. If you see something weird on your report, you can dispute it on your own. And you really do not need to be checking that much — once a month or once a quarter is fine, kind of like your 401(k)."If you have a credit score over 720 or 780, stop worrying. Don't be obsessed with getting an 800 or 820," Wu said. "This is not your SAT score."If you're in trouble, there are nonprofits out there that can help you figure out what to do, for little or no money."If you've got bad credit, if your credit score is low, where I'd start is with a nonprofit credit counselor," Pizor said.If you want to sign up for identity-theft protection or credit monitoring, fine. But those services aren't a fail-safe, so you'll want to walk in with your eyes wide open. The credit experts I spoke with were very wary about credit repair across the board. The next time you start to worry about your credit score, take a beat. Not to get too woo-woo here, but really, there's only so much you can control."I mean, the magic bullet is building a better system," Wu said.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/emily-stewart">Emily Stewart</a> is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

The best way to fix your credit score? Ignore it.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The average American household spends at least $475 a month on groceries.</li><li>40 million Americans are food insecure and SNAP benefits often don't provide enough financial help.</li></ul>Mary Dacus, 69, fills her basket at Ruler Foods <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/boomer-couple-lives-social-security-snap-no-retirement-savings-2024-6">with the essentials</a>.Three cans of SpaghettiOs for $1 each, a dozen eggs for $2.99, a half gallon of milk for $2.59. She adds bread, soup, potatoes, chili mix, graham crackers, cereal bars, clementines, toilet paper, some frozen vegetables, and canned chicken — the fresh stuff is expensive.It comes to $83.02.Dacus goes shopping near her home in Robinson, Illinois — a city 200 miles south of Chicago — on the fourth Wednesday of every month after her husband Stephen cashes his <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/what-is-social-security">Social Security check</a>. She hopes the food will last them a full 30 days, but she inevitably has to stop at Walmart a few times to fill in the gaps.Granola for $5.34, bell peppers for $2.88, two bottles of butter pecan coffee creamer for $7.94, and a new vacuum bag for $8.77. That's an additional $53.39.Dacus and her husband have to stick to a tight budget: their household only receives $23 a month from <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/snap-benefits-eating-less-skipping-meals-pandemic-funding-cut-2023-9">SNAP.</a> They must rely on their combined $2,140 Social Security income for the rest and any other expenses they have since they're both retired. The average American household spends $475 a month on groceries plus $303 on restaurants and takeout, according to the latest available <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/consumer-expenditures/2022/home.htm">US Bureau of Labor Statistics report</a> on consumer expenditures in 2022.There are <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics/#:~:text=In%202022%3A,with%20adults%2C%20were%20food%20insecure.">over 40 million Americans</a> experiencing food insecurity. SNAP provides relief for many households living paycheck to paycheck. But some struggling families, like Dacus', don't receive enough help, or their income is considered too high <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/snap-alice-food-stamps-hunger-government-assitance-free-meals-2024-5">to receive any help at all</a>. ALICEs — people who are asset-limited, income-constrained, employed — <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/alice-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-without-government-assistance-snap-medicaid-2024-5#:~:text=Many%20live%20paycheck%20to%20paycheck,electricity%20bill%20or%20their%20rent.">feel especially left behind</a> by food assistance programs.According to the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/19/what-the-data-says-about-food-stamps-in-the-u-s/">Pew Research Center</a>, about 13% of Americans, or 22 million households, are enrolled in government food benefits.Anything helps, Dacus said, but her SNAP allocation "barely covers one meal.""The man called me and told me, 'Oh, we're going to get you $23 a month.' And I laughed," she said. "That's pitiful. That's really pitiful."<h2 id="33dd40c8-3f23-40e4-beb7-fb5624258084">With limited SNAP dollars, Dacus relies on food pantries</h2>Dacus is a good cook — she used to love making pot roast when she could afford it — and can usually make a meal out of whatever miscellaneous ingredients she and Stephen have in their cupboard. She typically makes crockpot meals, casseroles, or other dishes that she can stretch for more than one meal. But $23 a month in food benefits <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-youre-still-spending-much-of-your-budget-on-food-2024-2">isn't even close</a> to affording what they need to eat.Often, Dacus said a full month of food and household products can run them about $200, plus an additional $30 to $50 a week when they run out of things. They struggle with their other <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/middle-class-americans-earning-above-poverty-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-2024-4">household bills</a>, are in nearly $10,000 in credit card debt, and have <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/college-adjunct-professor-salary-not-enough-live-student-loan-debt-2024-6">drained their savings</a> in order to pay for food and healthcare."We've used our credit cards within the last three and a half years to buy groceries and things that we needed," she said, adding that she and Stephen's low credit score has now made it difficult to qualify for housing and car payments.To avoid going hungry, Dacus said she has to rely on <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-lose-food-stamps-snap-benefits-banks-bracing-high-need-2023-2">local food pantries</a>. They pick up canned goods and packaged food. But there aren't many food pantries near her house, and the ones in driving distance are open for limited hours. Even when they can go to the pantry, Dacus said the food is unhealthy and sometimes spoiled.<h2 id="51edbf87-5f70-43e3-a43f-f07eaa9fc336">SNAP benefits don't always align with household needs</h2>America's SNAP program provides low-income households with money to grocery shop, and the qualifying criteria is based on the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/middle-class-americans-earning-above-poverty-struggles-afford-food-medicine-2024-4#:~:text=The%20federal%20poverty%20line%20is,ALICEs%20live%20paycheck%20to%20paycheck.">federal poverty line</a>. The allocation can also be affected by earned-income taxes, and the number of children or older adults in a household. What's more, the costs of groceries can vary widely based on a person's location.An individual with a monthly gross income lower than $1,580 can receive a maximum of $291 monthly from SNAP, and a couple with a monthly income lower than $2,137 can receive a maximum of $535, according to the <a target="_blank" href="https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/FY24-SNAP-COLA-Memo.pdf#page=2">US Department of Agriculture</a>. Yet, many households like Dacus' don't receive the maximum because their income isn't low enough.There are also limitations on how SNAP dollars can be used. The money covers basic food products like milk and bread, but it cannot be used to purchase dish soap, toilet paper, laundry detergent, vitamins, feminine products, over-the-counter medicine, or pet food.Groceries are just part of the $38,268 the average couple in Robinson, Illinois needs to survive every year, which includes the cost of housing, utilities, healthcare, transportation, and unexpected expenses, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.unitedforalice.org/household-budgets/illinois">according to United Way</a>. For a family with two school-age children, that number becomes $61,632. This budget doesn't leave any room to build savings or prepare for retirement.It's also <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/government-assistance-food-stamps-snap-doesnt-help-low-income-dinks-2024-5">more difficult for childfree adults</a>, or adults whose children are no longer minors, to qualify for food assistance. Dacus said she and her husband have to rely on SNAP and food pantries because she can't access other programs like <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-wants-cut-wic-low-income-baby-food-parents-2023-7">WIC</a> (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children), <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/enhanced-child-tax-credit-parents-passes-house-business-tax-relief-2024-1">the child tax credit</a>, and parts of the earned-income tax credit."We don't get ahead at all," Dacus said. "We take two steps forward and three back."Are you experiencing food insecurity? Are you open to sharing your experience with SNAP or grocery shopping? If so, reach out to this reporter at <a target="_blank" href="mailto:allisonkelly@businessinsider.com">allisonkelly@businessinsider.com</a>.

A retired couple gets $23 monthly from SNAP and uses credit cards to buy groceries. They worry about going hungry.

The offers and details on this page may have updated or changed since the time of publication. See our article on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chase-united-explorer-card-perks-annual-fee-worth-it-2024-7" target="_blank">Business Insider</a> for current information.<ul class="summary-list"><li>As a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/best-us-states-to-visit-according-to-frequent-traveler">frequent traveler</a>, I rely on travel credit cards to save money and earn rewards. </li><li>I love using my Chase United℠ Explorer Card, which comes with a $0 intro for the first year, then $95 annual fee.</li></ul>Travel credit cards are hotter than ever, with <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/how-the-41-of-americans-with-a-travel-credit-card-can-boost-rewards" target="_blank" rel="noopener">over 41% of Americans</a> having a card that provides travel rewards. However, with many cards offering lounge access, statement credits, and travel insurance, some cards' annual fees have climbed to nearly $700 a year. As a frequent traveler, I have and use a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/american-express-platinum-card-perks-annual-fee-worth-it-2024-5">credit card with a high annual fee</a>. However, I've paired it with the United℠ Explorer Card, which has a much lower annual fee of $0 intro for the first year, then $95.This card, included in Business Insider's guide to the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/best-airline-credit-cards">best airline credit cards</a>, offers a surprisingly robust number of benefits, from priority boarding on United flights to statement credits that can be redeemed for a DashPass membership.Here are some of the perks I get from using my <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/united-explorer-card-review">United℠ Explorer Card</a>.<h2>As a United℠ Explorer Card cardholder, I always get priority boarding</h2>Some travelers may not care which boarding group they're in, but I am not one of them. Whether I'm <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-i-pack-only-carry-on-month-long-trip-packing-tips-2023">traveling with a carry-on</a> and want to ensure I have space in the overhead compartment or just want to get myself situated and comfortable before a flight, boarding in a priority group is important to me. As a United℠ Explorer Card cardholder, I am always in a priority-boarding group. <h2>Every four years, I get a statement credit of up to $100 for TSA PreCheck, Global Entry, or NEXUS </h2><div type="image" title="Signs on flags in an airport that say &quot;TSA Precheck&quot; and &quot;Enter here,&quot; in front of roped lines." height="750" width="1000" msid="111815695" hostid="261" sizebytes="66222"></div>Although traveling can be a test of patience, I've found that having an expedited security process can make the experience much smoother. That's why I love that my United℠ Explorer Card reimburses me for services like TSA PreCheck, Global Entry, and NEXUS.I've traveled with <a href="https://www.insider.com/why-get-tsa-precheck-2018-11">TSA PreCheck</a> for years, and recently became a Global Entry member (which includes PreCheck). Both programs are valid for five years, with PreCheck costing $78 to apply and Global Entry costing $100. NEXUS, which allows for expedited entry between the US and Canada, is also valid for five years and costs $50 to apply. If I charge the application fee for one of these services to my United℠ Explorer Card, I get reimbursed on my statement once every four years, effectively making the membership free. Several other premium <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/best-global-entry-tsa-precheck-credit-card">credit cards also offer Global Entry and TSA PreCheck</a> statement credits. <h2>The first checked bag is free for me and a companion on my reservation</h2>Although many people aim to travel using only a carry-on, it's not always possible to do so. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/united-airlines-raises-baggage-fees-2024/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Checked bag fees have only increased</a>, with one bag costing $40 to check on United flights.However, if you're a United℠ Explorer Card cardholder, you and your companion (on the same reservation) get your first bags checked for free when purchasing flights using the card. <h2>I get two United Club one-time-use lounge passes a year</h2><div type="image" title="Emily sitting in a brown-leather chair, holding a glass of white wine with a plate of food on a table next to her. The walls are glass and see-through." height="2268" width="3023" msid="111815698" hostid="261" sizebytes="777214"></div><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/credit-cards-with-airport-lounge-access">Airport lounges</a> are popping up everywhere, generally as a benefit of a high-annual-fee credit card or for those flying in first or business classes. But if you want the benefit of a lounge without high spending, the United℠ Explorer Card includes two one-time lounge passes a year for United Club use, which typically cost $59 apiece.I've used my one-time passes when I have a long layover or a delayed flight to access a United Club for complimentary food, drinks, and a quiet place to wait for my flight. This benefit alone exceeds the entire cost of the card's annual fee.<h2>The card comes with lots of added travel protections</h2>For a card with a low annual fee, the United℠ Explorer Card packs a punch with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/travel-insurance/travel-insurance-vs-credit-card">travel insurance</a> protections. This card includes lost luggage reimbursement (up to $3,000 per passenger), trip delay reimbursement (after 12 hours of delay, up to $500 per ticket for unreimbursed expenses), baggage delay insurance (after 6 hours of delay, up to $100 for three days), and trip cancellation or interruption insurance (up to $1,500 per person).When booking my travel with the United℠ Explorer Card, these perks allow me to travel with much more peace of mind. In fact, I've personally used both the baggage delay and trip delay insurance without any issues. <h2>I receive 25% back on in-flight purchases</h2><div type="image" title="A cookie in a package, a small bottle of white wine, a blue cup, and a napkin sit on a tray on a plane." height="2274" width="3024" msid="111815696" hostid="261" sizebytes="410306"></div>Another benefit I really love is that United℠ Explorer Card cardholders receive 25% back on in-flight purchases on United flights. This includes food, alcoholic beverages, and even WiFi purchases. Since I travel often, this perk makes a huge difference for me. <h2>The card also comes with a complimentary one-year membership to DashPass </h2>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/united-explorer-card-review">United℠ Explorer Card</a> offers one year of complimentary DashPass membership, which can be used on DoorDash and Caviar. The benefit, normally $10 a month, offers various benefits like $0 delivery fees on orders that meet the minimum spend. If you regularly have <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/foods-to-never-get-delivered-from-restaurants-according-to-chef-2022-6">food delivered</a> at home or while traveling, these fees add up, making the membership a great money-saving benefit. <h2>I also get primary rental car insurance</h2>I often rent cars during my travels, and having as much coverage as possible when driving them is important to me. The United℠ Explorer Card includes primary rental car insurance coverage. This means that I'm eligible for reimbursement up to the vehicle's actual cash value for theft and collision damage for most rental cars within the US and abroad. With primary coverage, I also don't have to first file a claim with my own auto insurance company.

You Searched For "credit card number" and got 13 results

Credit card growth experiencing a slowdown, as borrowers struggle to pay back loans

BI India Bureau

Credit card companies are ripping you off like never before

Ayelet Sheffey

Indians credit card spending increases 19% YoY to Rs 1.7 trillion in July 2024

ANI

One of the nicest perks on my credit card is making me a jerk

Emily Stewart

Best Credit Cards for Military Members of 2024

Carissa Rawson

Wells Fargo may have underestimated just how savvy millennial credit card holders can be

Lloyd Lee

Credit-card points might be entering a new era

Dan DeFrancesco,Alex Bitter

Banks have finally fixed the single most annoying thing about credit cards

Emily Stewart

Americans are facing a credit card debt crisis

Cork Gaines

Best Business Credit Cards of January 2024

Jasmin Baron,Katherine Fan,An…

The best way to fix your credit score? Ignore it.

Emily Stewart

A retired couple gets $23 monthly from SNAP and uses credit cards to buy groceries. They worry about going hungry.

Allie Kelly,Madison Hoff

I love using my Chase United Explorer card with a low annual fee. I get tons of travel perks, plus credits for DoorDash and more.

Emily Hart

Popular Keywords

Buying Guides