Business Credit Cards

Hewlett-Packard Co. is combining its printing and PC units to save money, according to published reports.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/eventbrite-unable-square-builds-own-ipad-card-reader-185527445.html

Updated Ports of Auckland’s moves to contract out almost 300 jobs have been halted, with the port agreeing to go back to the bargaining table.

The Maritime Union and the port have both agreed to return to negotiations, after a…Auckland’s port strike stretches Tauranga to limit

Article source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10793592&ref=rss

Exclusive credit cards offer exclusive benefits and reap banks exclusive fees. Photo: Justin McManus

Premium credit cards are returning premium fees to banks – and that could end up costing us all.
THEY are the carrot often used to lure customers to decide between competing home loans by the big banks: the platinum or upmarket credit card with bonus rewards and exclusive access. They can arrive unsolicited in the mail as an upgrade to a loyal customer deserving of a new platinum status symbol.

Now banks and card issuers are using premium offerings in the credit card market to circumvent – legally – reforms to the credit card market made a decade ago that cut the lucrative fees banks charged each other every time a credit card was used.

At a time when overall credit growth is constrained because Australian households are paying down debt, the ability to earn fees is significant for banks and card issuers. So they’re appealing to our vanity with credit cards that offer status via exclusive member rewards, bonus points and the hope that one day a weekly load of supermarket shopping might end up in a rewards program trip to the Bahamas.

The Reserve Bank last week shone a spotlight on changes in the credit card industry over the past decade, when it revealed how it now takes $18,000 of spending on an average credit card to earn a $100 shopping voucher – a 50 per cent jump. The RBA argued that the price of transparency is fairer because customers paying cash were subsidising credit card users. Yesterday the RBA announced a proposed cap to surcharges that merchants can charge.

But as the RBA pointed out, banks and other credit card issuers have found a way to claw back fees from new, more exclusive cards. While those exclusive cards can come with bonus points and exclusive member rewards, they can also come with a catch – costing an annual fee of about $500 [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-on-high-fees-20120320-1vhtw.html

Eventbrite, a ticketing start-up based in San Francisco, is making a leap into the hardware business.On Tuesday, the company released its “At The Door Card Reader,” a credit card reading device for the iPad. The device is a rectangle-shaped dongle that fits into the charging dock at the base of the tablet.The card reader, which goes on sale Tuesday evening through EventBrite’s online store, is aimed at event planners who want a way to sell tickets to their events at the door, said Tamara Mendelsohn, the vice president for marketing.Eventbrite does a fair amount of its business online, bolstered by the company’s social media hooks and partnerships with Facebook and Twitter. But even so, the company thinks it is missing out on a large portion of the market. “Many ticket sales happen at the door because people always make last-minute decisions about what they’re doing,” Ms. Mendelsohn said.She said the company decided to release a proprietary reader, instead of working with an existing mobile payments company like Square, because third-party payments companies like Square do not make available the data they capture about the people who are buying those tickets at the door.“It comes down to data integration,” she said. “Otherwise, the organizers don’t have a list of the people who came or any way to contact them after the event.”Eventbrite’s move echoes a similar one by PayPal, which recently unveiled its own alternative to Square, a credit card reader that can be attached to an iPhone or iPad to process payments.Ms. Mendelsohn said the company started discussing building its own hardware about a year ago. The company designed the hardware internally, teamed up with an overseas manufacturer to make the devices, then tested them at several big events, including a barbecue festival. The reader sells for $10, although the company says it will refund that money to its buyers’ EventBrite account after the purchase.The company said its readers could process 400 transactions per hour and could connect wirelessly with printers to print out tickets and receipts for customers. The company hopes to expand its business, which is already booming; Eventbrite processed more than 20 million tickets for nearly half a million events during 2011.The release of the card reader “really opens up the market for us,” Ms. Mendelsohn said.

Article source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/eventbrite-moves-into-mobile-payments-with-a-credit-card-reader/

Ticketing company Eventbrite has launched another credit-card dongle to accept payments, paired with an app that’s specifically designed for the ticketing industry.

The Eventbrite At The Door card reader is essentially free, as Eventbrite will reimburse the $10 purchase fee for the first reader. Additional readers will cost extra. Users can order the At the Door reader at the Eventbrite online store.

Normally, Eventbrite would charge 2.5 percent of the ticket cost plus 99 cents, as well as a credit-card processing fee of 3 percent. For now, Eventbrite has waived all but the credit-card fee.

The reader plugs into the 30-pin connector used by the iPad or iPhone, a structural change designed to allow customers a better swiping experience. Another recent dongle launch, the PayPal Here, used a “lip” to support the reader, which used the headphone jack preferred by the original credit-card dongle, designed by Square.

Although the Square or PayPal dongles can be used for processing ticket payments, the Eventbrite solution was specifically designed to sell tickets and merchandise – as the name suggests – at the door, up to 400 transactions per hour. The associated app also allows the user to create a number of different categories, everything from merchandise like hats and T-shirts, to different categories of tickets, according to an Eventbrite spokeswoman.

The iPhone or iPad can be connected to a wireless Star TSP143 to print tickets or custom receipts, the Eventbrite spokeswoman said. All of the credit-card data is encrypted, so that it can be passed safely wirelessly.

Eventbrite’s app also manages inventory, even across multiple Eventbrite devices, so that a sales representative at the door doesn’t oversell the venue. A meter “counts down” the available tickets. The app wasn’t specifically designed to account for pre-registrations, but a merchant could enter a specific discount category for those who ordered early, the Eventbrite spokeswoman said.

Refunds, unfortunately, can not be processed, she added.

For more from Mark, follow him on Twitter @MarkHachman.

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Article source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2401910,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03069TX1K0001121

ReviewEvaluating new financial products and services.When I went to pay for a sandwich  at a Manhattan cafe last week, the credit card I pulled out of my wallet elicited three consecutive “Wows” from the cashier. “I see a lot of credit cards,” he told me, “and I’ve never seen one like that before.”The card is called the Citi ThankYou Preferred 2G Card with Request Rewards (a mouthful). And the reason the cashier was so, well, wowed, was because the card has a blinking blue light — built right into the card — that signals it is ready for use. But the card’s real selling point is that it enables you to redeem your points anywhere you can swipe your card.The card arrived in my mailbox late last year in a white cardboard box, a sign that this wasn’t any ordinary replacement card. It’s actually a companion card to the standard-issue Citi ThankYou Card. The new card operates under the same rules as the original, but it lets you cash in your rewards at the cash register.For the card to work, you need to press one of its two buttons before swiping. If you press the “Regular Credit” button, a blue light flashes and you can swipe your card just as you would with any other transaction (if you don’t press the button before swiping, it won’t work). But if you press the “Request Rewards” button and you have at least 1,000 points in your rewards bank, you will receive a $10 statement credit within one to two billing cycles. (Your purchase will post as usual. And if don’t have enough points, the transaction goes through as it normally would.)That translates into a reward of about a penny a point — unremarkably average. But it beat some of the cash rewards the bank was offering through its ThankYou.com Web site, where the exchange rate was much worse. You needed at least 2,500 points to get a $15 statement credit, for instance. Other offerings were a bit better — retailer gift cards worth $25 were available for about 2,500 points.Citi sent the 2G card to a limited group of Citi ThankYou and Dividend cardholders, so how many points you’re eligible to earn depends on which card you have. The card I used provides one point for every dollar spent. The points don’t expire, and there’s no ceiling on the number of points you can earn. (It comes with certain introductory offers that can bolster your earnings — at least in the beginning.)It’s still unclear whether Citi will make the fancy 2G cards more widely available to all cardholders who want them. Right now, you can’t call and request one. A Citibank spokeswoman said it continues “to listen to feedback from our clients, including those in the 2G pilot program, to deliver the best products and solutions to serve their needs.”The technology powering the plastic, created by a company called Dynamics Inc.,  is pretty incredible. When you press the “request rewards” button, [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/citi-credit-card-lets-you-redeem-points-at-the-register/

Platinum credit cards are being used to grow interchange fees, writes Michael Evans.
They are the carrot often used to lure customers to decide between competing home loans by the big banks: the platinum or upmarket credit card with bonus rewards and exclusive access. They can arrive unsolicited in the mail as an upgrade to a loyal customer deserving of a new platinum status symbol.

Now banks and card issuers are using premium offerings in the credit card market to circumvent – legally – reforms made a decade ago that cut the lucrative fees banks charged each other every time a credit card was used.

At a time when credit growth is constrained because households are paying down debt, the ability to earn fees is significant for banks and card issuers. So they’re appealing to our vanity with credit cards that offer status via exclusive member rewards, bonus points and the hope that one day a weekly load of supermarket shopping might end up in a rewards program trip to the Bahamas.

The Reserve Bank last week shone a spotlight on changes in the credit card industry over the past decade, revealing how it now takes $18,000 of spending on an average credit card to earn a $100 shopping voucher. The Reserve argues the price transparency is fairer because customers paying cash were subsidising credit card users. And yesterday it announced a proposed cap to surcharges that merchants can charge.

But as the Reserve points out, banks and other card issuers have found a way to claw back fees from exclusive cards. While those cards can come with bonus points and exclusive member rewards, they can also come with annual fees of about $500 and a higher interest rate than plain vanilla cards.

In the early 2000s, the Reserve was concerned credit card holders were being subsidised to use their cards through arrangements that added to merchants’ costs. Banks and card issuers were clipping the ticket via interchange fees paid by the merchant’s financial institution to the cardholder’s financial institution with each swipe.

Reforms reduced those fees, which had been used by card issuers to support attractive rewards programs on credit card products. Now [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://www.businessday.com.au/business/banks-new-card-game-gets-around-charge-caps-20120320-1vi2f.html

Altogether £322million was spent on the cards on 1.75million transactions last
year, most commonly on travel and hotel accommodation.

However, the NAO found departments “are not given clear guidance on when the
card may (or may not) be an appropriate way to procure goods and services”.

A business case for the cards was based on outdated information from 1998,
which meant that the system “still contains risks to value for money”. The
NAO found “notable weaknesses” in the way the cards were used at five
departments which sampled by the auditors.

The report found “instances of departments not complying with controls, such
as missing receipts or invoices to support transactions, or no evidence that
the cardholder was authorised to make purchases.

“In some departments we identified some significant issues, including a large
backlog of unapproved transactions and limited approval and reviewing
procedures”.

Some departments had “inadequate management information and cannot monitor
Government Procurement Card use effectively”, it said.

A sample examination of payments in some departments between April and
September last year found two thirds of 35 payments were found to have
broken rules on how the cards work.

The report also discovered that there was a backlog of £600,000-worth of
payments awaiting approval.

At the Ministry of Defence, which accounts for 75pc of spending on the cards,
the NAO found “serious control weaknesses owing to widespread
non-compliance”.

More than half of the transactions at the Foreign Office were not approved by
manager, while there were “no punitive enforcement measures were in
place to ensure compliance with the approval system”.

Mrs Hodge said the 44-page NAO report had “uncovered evidence of unauthorised
transactions and a culture of complacency in some departments”.

She told The Daily Telegraph that when the PAC came to examine the
report it would see whether the cards needed to be ditched. She said: “One
question we will want to be asked is whether or not they should be scrapped.”

She called on ministers to issue guidance on when cards should and should not
be used given the risk of “reputational damage”.

She said: “Given the risks of fraud and poor value for money, I am concerned
that neither departments nor the Cabinet Office know enough about the use of
procurement cards in Government.

“When the average transaction value is £184, the initiative to publish
transactions over £500 is not enough to protect public money from fraud and
misuse. We will want to know what action the Government is taking to improve
controls.

“I am also concerned that departments do not have a good enough understanding
about when using the Card is the best value for money option.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said: [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568387/s/1d995dff/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cpolitics0C91539560CGovenment0Ecredit0Ecards0Ecould0Ebe0Escrapped0Eafter0ENational0EAudit0EOffice0Efound0Ewidespread0Eabuse0Bhtml/story01.htm

see photosClick for full photo gallery: Ten Top Credit Card Choices From College To Retirement
I’m not much of an international traveler, but I do find myself traveling outside the United States on occasion. In fact, I was out of the country just last week, and I was once again reminded that none of my credit cards are particularly good for international travel.
As a reminder, my main cards are the Amex Platinum Delta SkyMiles card and the Chase Freedom Visa card. I also have an Amex Blue Cash rewards card. The problem with these cards is that they charge foreign transaction fees.
In the case of Amex, there’s a 2.7% foreign transaction fee. For the Chase Freedom card, the foreign transaction fee is 3%. Neither is enough to make me shun my cards when traveling abroad, but it would be nice to have card with no transaction fee.
So which cards should I be looking at? The details vary from card to card, even within issuers. For example, while my Amex charges 2.7%, the Platinum Card from Amex has no foreign transaction fees. The same goes for the Chase Sapphire card.
For their part, Capital One charges no foreign transaction fees on their cards, and Discover looks similarly attractive, having ditched foreign transaction fees last fall. Unfortunately, Discover cards aren’t nearly as widely accepted.
Another possible consideration is whether you’ll be able to use a traditional credit card with a plain old magnetic stripe. There has been a strong movement toward so-called “Chip and PIN” cards outside the United States.
While it’s just a matter of time until this technology is widely adopted in the United States, you currently have fairly limited choices when it comes to compliant cards.
The original article can be found at FiveCentNickel.com: “Best Credit Cards for International Travel?“

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2012/03/20/best-credit-cards-for-international-travel/?feed=rss_home

It’s easy to lose a card — it can fall out of your purse, get left on a restaurant table or slip between couch cushions after an online purchase — but getting a new one usually is fairly simple. However, as banks look for new ways to make money, you might have to pay, especially if you want your replacement card in a hurry. “At the end of the day, income has to cover expenses … and there is a cost associated with providing and delivering the card,” says Nessa Feddis, vice president and senior counsel for the American Bankers Association. While most issuers still do not charge to replace a lost credit or debit card via standard U.S. mail — though it now can cost Bank of America customers $5 for a replacement debit card — it could become more common in the future. Bank of America announced its debit card replacement fee in 2011. Center for Responsible Lending spokeswoman Kathleen Day says: “There is a tendency toward unbundling costs and charging customers on an a la carte basis.” Free card replacement can be slow When a customer loses a card, the issuer has to check for fraudulent charges, shut down the old account, then issue a new card with a new number — all of which costs money, according to Feddis. However, a CreditCards.com survey of the top 10 card issuers found that most still will replace a lost credit or debit card for free. “If you occasionally lose your card, odds are they’re not going to charge you,” Feddis says, noting that some banks might begin imposing a fee if a customer loses cards repeatedly. ( Story continues below graphic .) Free card replacement can take as long as 10 business days as standard mail delivery times can vary, though. For example, our survey found that Wells Fargo and Capital One cards can take up to a week or more to arrive via standard delivery, while USAA and Barclay’s can take as long as 10 business days. That delay caused problems for entrepreneur Sara Gershfeld, who lost her Wells Fargo debit card last year. She had linked that card to her Paypal account, which she used to pay programmers who were building a website for her business. “The bank told me it would take 10 business days, and couldn’t even give me the new card number to put into my Paypal,” Gershfeld says. “It was really inconvenient and I didn’t understand why it would take that long.” So, Gershfeld transferred most of her money to a Chase account, where she discovered  she could always get any lost card replaced within two days. [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lost-credit-debit-card-want-120000032.html