UK credit card holders now face an average interest rate of 17.7% – up from 16.6% a year ago. That’s despite the base rate falling significantly in recent months. Store cards typically attract a much higher rate of interest and in most circumstances do not offer a competitive rate.

As consumers battle with personal debt, credit card providers have agreed to not increase the interest rate on a card for at least a year after the customer signs up for it. This agreement has come about after the Government applied pressure to the credit card providers to agree to a new code of conduct.

As the card providers look to boost or at least retain their revenues we should all expect them to levy fees for late payments, non-payments, statement requestes, etc. It is also widely rumoured that credit card providers may soon start charging annual fees. It is often suggested that the card providers worst (least profitable) customers are those that pay off their card balance in full each month and do not therefore pay any interest.

As new rules are introduced to let credit card companies share customer data, so called card tarts could be denied cheap credit.

The entirely legitimate process of moving credit card debts around to benefit from low, promotional interest rates gave practising consumers the nickname of card tarts. It was a mechanism I successfully used myself and was partly the inspiration behind our first finance website. I managed my accounts carefully and responsibly and saved myself hundreds of pounds as a result.

From this week the five largest credit card providers have agreed to share more details about each others customers. They are:

• Barclaycard
• Capital One
• GE Money
• HBOS
• MBNA