Holiday season closes amidst a blockbuster turnout for small retail businesses globally. Even though the shortened holiday season may have pushed retail sales down a tad, business owners remain confident about their businesses going forward. Scrooge remained with us as organized crime hijacked truckloads of holiday stuff and gift card scam artists manifest themselves bigly…
Midwest credit unions offer a balanced mix of points and cash-back for their credit card programs and 75% offer introductory rates ranging from 0% to 2.9% for the first six or twelve months. On the hole, credit unions in the Midwest states check off all the boxes when matched up to current credit card offerings…
Southern credit unions offer single digit interest rates and are nearly devoid of fees, except for reasonable late payment fees. Besides the extremely competitive pricing, nearly all credit unions in the South offer a rewards program and/or generous unlimited cash-back programs. From the huge Suncoast Credit Union in Florida to the tiny Bayer Heritage Federal…
The oldest credit card in the U.S. reached its 68th birthday this year. When the Diners Club card was started by Frank McNamara in 1950, it only had around 200 members and 27 restaurants. After a group of investors put up $1.5 million, the cardboard credit card exploded, signing up more than 20,000 members in…
The Chase United Explorer Visa was picked by millennial travelers as their “Favorite Credit Card” for the second straight year. The card is a co-brand with United Airlines’ MileagePlus loyalty program, also crowned “Favorite Frequent-Flyer Program” for the fourth time. The Trazee Awards are hosted by trazeetravel.com for travelers 40 years and younger by the teams at…
Southwest higher altitude business card is offering a whopping 80K points sign-up bonus plus a 9K points card anniversary award. The 80K bonus points require a $5,000 card spend in the first three months. The new Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business Visa from Chase will set a standard in the very competitive business reward credit…
A lite Marriott Bonvoy Chase Visa card has been unveiled with less perks than the regular version, but with no-annual-fee, a bold move sure to rattle competition amongst rival co-branded travel reward credit cards. The new no-annual-fee Marriott Bonvoy Bold Chase Visa card will complement the recently introduced Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Chase Visa Signature card,…
Card annual fees for general purpose credit cards, such as Visa and Mastercard, have been a fixture in the U.S. marketplace since their inception in the late 1960s. When CardTrak began tracking U.S. major credit cards in the 1980s, all of the top ten issuers offered the same pricing: a 19.8% annual interest rate and…
The American Express Blue card this month will be mixing in more green by adding new automatic greenbacks to its Cash Preferred Card. The new perks include 6% cash back on select U.S. streaming subscriptions and 3% cash back on transit purchases. The American Express Preferred card already offers one of the most generous automatic…
The Marriott Bonvoy rewards program has snagged four Freddie Awards for its hotel programs. More than seven million travelers voted in the 29th annual Freddie Awards. Marriott Bonvoy was named “Program of the Year, Americas”, for the 12th consecutive year. The other awards included: “Best Hotel Promotion, the Americas”; “Best Elite Hotel Program, Europe and…
