A secured card can certainly help control spending and track financial expenditures. By only charging for products or services using money you pre-pay, you don't have to worry about mounting interest charges and late fees. A secured card is also useful for teaching financial responsibility to people who are initially engaging in consumer credit, such as teenagers. Additionally, a secured card offers a little more security because the maximum that can be fraudulently charged is the amount you pre-pay.
If you have no credit history, a secured card can help you establish credit. Be sure to apply for a card that reports your activity to at least one of the major credit bureaus, preferably all three.
If you are a business owner, a secured card is a great way to give your employees limited access to your company funds for buying office supplies, booking business travel arrangements, etc.
A secured card also makes a great gift. Instead of purchasing presents for holidays or birthdays, give a secured card instead, pre-paid with the amount of money you would have spent if you had bought a gift. This way, the recipient can purchase exactly what he or she truly desires.
Another benefit of a secured card is the fact that it's easier for many people, even those with bad credit, to get approved. Apply for your secured card today.
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Need more credit card information? Read our financial and credit articles related to a secured card.
Credit
Card
Before
traveling, call the credit card company so that purchases will not be halted due
to fraud measures. This is especially necessary when traveling to a foreign
country. This helps avoid a freeze on a credit card account. There is antifraud software that monitors customers’ spending
patterns. When cardholders stray from usual habits, for example, like making
purchases in another state instead of at a store in the home ZIP code area, it
could be flagged as fraud.
Many
people are glad about this, but others get upset when purchases are denied. In
addition to watching for unusual spending patterns, banks also monitor where criminals use stolen
cards, which can be places like automated payment kiosks in metropolitan areas.
This is why some people have more than one credit card when they travel. It can
be a big problem to unfreeze a card when traveling in a foreign country.
For
people who travel all the time, countries in Europe, Japan, Canada, and Mexico have adopted a
credit card that has a chip. The customer must enter a PIN. Merchants that accept
Visa, MasterCard and
American Express are supposed to let customers pay with either type of
card, yet some employees at stores outside the United States do not always know what to do with the magnetic version.
Another
problem can be that automated kiosks in Europe, may only accept chip and PIN cards, particularly in
train stations, parking garages, gas stations, and some tollbooths. When this
happens, Americans with magnetic stripe cards usually have to wait in line to pay with cash or have a clerk swipe their cards.
These lines can be long and frustrating when trying to catch a train. Some merchants in other parts of the world often have higher minimum-purchase
requirements, to use a credit card or simply do not accept the cards because they
do not want to pay the fees card companies charge retailers. Be sure to contact
card issuers before traveling and check the credit limits on each card.
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Tip of the Day: To curb credit card charges, wrap your credit card in a sheet of paper and keep a log of purchases written on the paper, with a grand total of charges in view each time you reach for your card. Before swiping your card, figure out how many hours you'll have to work in order to payoff the charge and jot on the paper: "IOU #Hours of Work". Perhaps seeing how long you'll need to work to payoff the charge will help curb spending.
