Feel like credit card companies never cut you any slack? Or that you are smothered by high card interest rates? Don’t worry, some help is on the way. The Fed is set to vote on Thursday for new credit card reform. The new reforms would mean:

• End double cycle billing which averages out the balance from your two previous bills. This means that people who carry a balance will no longer get hit with retroactive interest charges on their previous month’s bil.
• Consumers will now be given a reasonable amount of time to make payments, and these payments will be applied to higher rate balances first to reduce interest penalties and fees.
• Credit card statements will clearly list the time of day that a payment is due, and any changes to accounts would be in bold or listed separately.

Many consumer advocacy groups say this reform couldn’t come soon enough.  According to statistics from 3rd quarter, the Fed reported that Americans have about $976.3 billion in revolving credit and 4.9% of all credit cards were delinquent.

The other side of the story is that credit card companies are saying this increased regulation will mean tighter constraints on issuing credit, meaning less credit will be issued,  and cards will have higher prices.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 4:27 pm and is filed under credit card news, credit cards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.