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
and they will now share details about whether customers are on 0% deals or a low balance transer rate. The idea behind the data share being perhaps that the companies can avoid irresponsible lending. Additionally it might allow the companies to weed out entirely safe but unprofitable customers.
