• How to know if your teen is ready for a credit card (Fox Business News). These four questions are a good place to start:
  • Are they a saver?
  • Do they have a job?
  • Do they understand budgeting?
  • Do they make their own purchase decisions?

• CardHub reads the fine print and ranks credit card reward programs at ten largest card issuers (CardHub).  Very enlightening!   See who comes out on top with the most reward friendly program.  
• A good starting point for comparing credit card offers (US News and World Report).  Note the interest rate premium on rewards cards:
• “On average, rewards cards carry higher interest rates than non-rewards cards. According to IndexCreditCards.com, the average interest rate on a consumer rewards card is currently 17.64 percent, and the average rate on a non-rewards card is 15.48 percent – that’s a full two percentage point difference.”
• When will consumers lose confidence in credit cards and when will banks tire of the losses incurred through fraud?  Here were the first four news articles when I searched Google News for “credit card” stories.  Great opportunity to teach students about ways to prevent fraud from occurring…
• SeaWorld employee accused of stealing credit cards
• Man recruited McDonald’s employees to steal credit card numbers, police say
• Phoenix man gets 20 years for credit card, ID scheme
• Indiana thieves using fake credit cards with real number
• For every problem or pain point, there is an entrepreneur trying to solve it.  An Israeli start-up provides an early warning system to alert cardholders to potential fraud (WSJ Blog):  
• “With credit-card fraud and financial-data theft rising alarmingly around the world, an Israeli fraud-watchdog startup says it can tell you when your credit-card details have been stolen by hackers—pretty much in real time.
• More on start-ups trying to solve the $25 billion fraud problem for credit card companies (Fast Company)
• Oh and the magnetic stripe is on its last legs too…(Engadget):

“In the next 18 months, the US is gearing up to transition debit and credit cards away from the magnetic stripe to embedded chip technology, which is already widely used in Europe, Asia and beyond. Who can you thank for the long-overdue upgrade? Target, whose data security breach earlier this year highlighted the security flaws in the magnetic stripe system. It’s a 50-year-old technology, after all, and it’s much easier to counterfeit than the computer chip in your next Visa card.”

• One large credit card company, Capital One, seeing more on-time payments from their customers (Washington Business Journal):

  “Capital One Financial Corp.’s credit card delinquency rate in April fell to the lowest level since before the recession and is half the delinquency rate in late-2009. In a regulatory filing, McLean-based Capital One reports an April card delinquency rate of 2.82 percent, down from 3.04 percent in March. Capital One’s credit card delinquency rate peaked in November 2009 at 5.89 percent.”

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.