Credit cards are well ingrained in today's culture - The average American uses as much as 2.6 credit cards on a monthly basis, As a matter of fact, there are enough credit cards in circulation to span Earth 3 times, As noted at 2018, at least 60% of households depend on their credit card for payments of electricity and living expenses that fact alone is affecting our lives directly and most of the times in the bad way.
Is there any other solution we can find, or we are doomed to be controlled?
In this article we will expose some of this facts and help you understand how to use better this disadvantages for your own.
Despite the increased regulations in the field of credit card insurance, credit card companies still do some dark things such violating our privacy.Even if you don’t have a credit card, here are some of the facts you should know, Here are some of the most shady stuff they do:
The creditors top Secrets
1. ”Data Sell to whoever pays“When you buy a new PS4 or a new porn DVD, you think your purchases are secure and private. Guess again, your credit card companies actually does billions of dollars from your and the brands transactions fees, But not only, they do most of the money from selling your private information. Nothing is private anymore: Your financial status, name, age, location, gender , telephone number and more is some of the information that some Agencies buy. Our data can include even beyond deep into our last salary and overdrafts. Using our data agencies sell it again to advertising campaigns that target us and show us “Relevant ads” based on our data structure .
2.Late payments will increase your APR
Did you know that your APR (annual percentage rate) will increase if you won’t pay your car’s loan on time ? your APR will rise whenever you don't pay any debt on time - Which means your loan can go from 5% percent fees up to 30%! The banks and credit companies have the “Universal default clause” which helps them determine who are the people who are more risky to them and probably won’t need it .
3. ”Fixed rates”
According to forbes issuers must give clients 14 days of notice before they change the rates and fees , but in real life the “fixed rate” is not so fixed as credit card companies feels free to raised the fees whenever they feel .
When you sign up on the card holding agreement and order a new credit card , the credit card companies hide this fact so deep hoping you will never find it , this fact talks about how they can easily change the APR (annual percentage rate) whenever they feels it is right for them , therefore your transactions fees will be higher .
And worse , the APR can also get higher as the credit card companies tracking our daily basis transactions , they run an algorithms checking constantly late payments, loans we do from the bank , for example buying a car or renting a house and use this information to kick the APR to new high levels.
4. ”Two penalties”
Inner Details aren't widely known by the average cardholder , in everyday practice , when you late for one payment you should pay one fee, let's say you have 2 credit cards , and on one of them you always pay on time but in the second you late one time , what actually is happening is that your 2nd credit card raise the overall APR and you will stuck with higher APR from now on , but good news on this fact is that the credit card issuers must reconsider the penalty of interest rate after half a year .
5.Your “rewards program”
Many of the card holders are attempt to get new cards and attracted to the idea of Reward program , the credit card companies can actually change the terms whenever they like , and make some products you want to redeem with the points you gain more hard to get, where they can do this kind of tricks cards with no annual fee can sometimes act as better deal , but you must check the inner details for some cards after 1 or 2 years the annual charge becoming insane.
It is so hard to understand and confusing to the simple user which led into a CFPB that investigate this rewarding systems and ensure they explain it well in their agreements .
Is there hope ? blockchain companies start to act and raise up the gloves?
Lately we hear more about “blockchain” and bitcoin , what is this technology in 3 sentences ?
The blockchain is the technology used for transmitting money without the need for 3rd party banking networks to interrupt , it also means to store data in transparent way so everyone can see the transactions that occur within the block history of transactions .
How blockchain might help us in the future :
As clients of consumption we would like to know our personal and financial data re super secured , we would like to know that the company that supply us with the power to consume something rather its online or offline protecting us and not selling us to the highest bidder , blockchain give us the full picture to see transactions so imagine the credit issuers has to use blockchain technology ? we could see when where and how they sell our data , and may demand something for our own .
For sure some Entrepreneurs already working for a solution for all the problems we mention above , i hope someday , we can take a little of all this power and billion of dollar back to our hands .