Card providers make significant policy changes

By UK CreditCards.com

On October 5, Sainsbury's Finance announced it will be offering customers "respite" by making significant changes to its credit card deals.

The provider will now be extending its 0% period on purchases for new customers to 10 months, from the current level of three months.

APRs for the average customer are to be reduced from 16.9% to 15.9%.

Stuart McKeggie, head of Sainsbury's Credit Cards, pointed out that both of these moves went against current trends within the sector as a whole.

"We are … hopefully offering borrowers a bit of respite in what is still a tough economic climate for many people," he added.

Meanwhile, Royal Bank of Scotland has announced that it will no longer be offering credit card deals to customers if they do not already have an account with the bank.

Credit card providers in general have increasingly focussed on customers' risk profiles due to the financial crisis and economic downturn.

The Bank of England said recently that credit conditions in the UK were likely to remain tight throughout the rest of the year.

UK banks, cards, subject to increased complaints

By UK CreditCards.com

A report from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has named the credit card providers and banks that are the subject of customer complaints.

The organisation said that it received around 70,000 new complaints over the first six months of 2009.

Five large high street banks, the Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Abbey and HSBC, accounted for over 50% of the total.

Meanwhile, FOS said that it had found in the customer's favour in around six in ten of all cases. This total went up to around 90% for credit card firms Capital One and Egg.

Christopher Kelly, the organisation's chairman, commented: "I will now be writing to the chairmen of the financial businesses that generate the largest proportion of our complaints workload, to ask them to consider very carefully both their own complaints performance."

FOS now plans to publish complaints data at six-month intervals. The new report is the first time that individual firms have been named as the source of complaints.

Foreign cash left unspent by travellers

By UK CreditCards.com

The widespread squandering of foreign currency left over from holidays by travellers was exposed Oct. 2 by Santander Cards.

Around £1.78bn has been left unspent this year, with 3% of holidaymakers either doing "nothing" with the cash or throwing it away.

Meanwhile, 62% were found to be saving the leftover money in order to spend it on future holidays and 8% were simply giving the cash to others.

The problem was also revealed to be very widespread, with 71% of people who had holidayed abroad in the past year returning home with unused money.

Callum Gibson, director at Santander Cards, said: "While it's not surprising that Britons are returning from foreign holidays with some leftover spending money, the incredible amount of unused foreign currency floating around the nation's homes is quite unexpected."

In response to this apparent wastage of funds, Santander Cards advised travellers to use credit cards for larger holiday purchases and to "carry only small amounts of cash" while overseas.

However, the cost-effectiveness of this approach is determined by the foreign currency fees levied by individual providers.

Many firms charge extra for overseas foreign transactions and cash withdrawals.