Suze Orman the popular CNBC celebrity and specialist in all kinds of personal finance has recently announced that she is launching her own branded payment product that will carry her name.
The Approved MasterCard is a debit card that can be pre-loaded with money and many people will find that it is a long-awaited addition to the existing market in pre-payment cards. There are a number of ways that the ‘The Approved’ card is different from the rest of the pre-payment cards on the market.
A lot of the existing pre-payment cards have come in for a fair amount of criticism recently from financial experts, usually because the card companies fail to clearly disclose the very high fees that come with them when they are used. Suze Orman’s card is different in that it will only charge new users $3 to get an ‘Approved’ card and only $3 per month to use so long as they put a minimum of £20 on to the card every month. Of course you may still have to pay an additional fee for using certain ATM’s.
When pre-pay cards were first introduced to the market some years ago, they were initially targeted at people who could not obtain a debit card because of their poor credit rating stopped them from being able to open a bank account or credit card. Since then they have become popular with a wider number of people, as in difficult financial times it has become a good way for a number of people to keep an eye on their spending to prevent spending too much money that they find they can’t afford.
It is not possible to overspend on a pre-pay card as once the money on the card has been spent you cannot use it until it has been reloaded with money, this makes budgeting a lot easier for certain people. On top of this a large number of people are losing faith with big banks due to the government bailing out banks due to their carelessness and with a number of banks who are increasing their fees and these people are choosing to look after their money free from the banks.
Orman’s plan is to change the way in which credit scoring companies determine a person’s credit score.
There is something radically wrong here. We are rewarding people for having credit and punishing people who pay in cash. I want to change that paradigm,
said Orman, according to The New York Times.
Similar Credit Card News:
- [August 11, 2010] Stringent Credit Card Laws for Under 21s
- [October 20, 2011] Consumers Can Avoid Debit Card Charges
- [May 5, 2011] Visa Will Be Harder Hit By Swipe Fee Cap
- [December 14, 2010] MasterCard Purchases Travelex
- [February 28, 2011] BB&T Launched New Prepaid MoneyAccount
- [January 5, 2011] Are You Unable to Get Credit?
- [January 2, 2012] Act To Offer Protection On Prepaid Credit Cards
