All About The Card Act

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On February 22nd, many provisions of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act take effect. The CARD Act's main focus is to rein in credit card practices and limit fees. It limits the amount of credit available to consumers in tough economic times in an effort to protect them.

As a result, many card issuers and banks have changed their business models by actively diminishing risk. New ploys include tightening up credit lines, dropping or restricting some borrowers and marketing less. Credit-limit reductions are expected to have two main impacts.

One is the reduction of the average balance size of accounts that are placed for collection. It will also diminish liquidity from the market that will make it more difficult to collect. This coupled with the consumer behavior of the past years, when people generally spent their savings and maxed out personal loans and home equity raises concern, because for many consumers, credit cards are the only short term credit at their fingertips.

But the CARD Act includes one huge measure that consumers must take, warns Micheal J Koopmans, financial expert; they are not permitted to pay off a credit card debt using another card. Keeping this in mind, this will have a huge effect on the collection industry. Analysts like Koopmans claim that the best way to deal with the sweeping changes is to be flexible and innovative. Rather than telephone calls and collections letters, the internet is begining to be explored as one option to work with.

There are a number of ideas that the collection industry has to bear in mind. Excess payments are going to have to be put towards paying off the highest interest balances first. The CARD Act allows customers to set their own credit limits that may be lower than those set by the card companies, and it restricts marketing to college students and severely restricts access to credit to people under 21.


About the Author:
Mallory McGuinness works for a debt collection company. Also she writes stories on business, finance, consumer spending and collection agencies. You are welcome to reprint this article - but get your own unique content version here.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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