The major credit card corporations have earned record earnings in recent years, mostly from fees and higher interest rates charged when customers either pay too late or go over their limits. Those unprecedented earnings are sure to increase with the passage of recent bankruptcy laws. The average household now has almost $10,000 in bank card debt, and with recent increases in credit card minimum payments, many people in the U.S. have no idea how to get out of the vicious circle of debt that surrounds bank cards.
Of course, while it is difficult to get out of credit card debt, it’s just as hard to prevent using bank cards at all. We live in an electronic society, and fewer and fewer people participate in cash transactions nowadays. If you do business on the Internet, it is vital that you have a bank card. What can be done?
One option is the debit card. In appearance, the debit card looks like a charge card, and may even have a Visa or Mastercard logo on it. As far as the merchant is concerned, it functions just like one, and you can either enter your personal identification number or sign your name and be on your way with your purchase. The difference between a debit card and a credit card is that the funds for the debit card come right out of your bank account. There is no bill, but you must have the cash in your bank account in order to make the purchase. Still, it is a fantastic system for those who have no credit cards or do not wish to use them.
What about people with no bank accounts?
To use a debit card, you must at least have a bank account from which the money can be taken. Or you did before now. A new system, introduced by a Florida company called Morgan Beaumont, has introduced a debit card that uses no bank account. This is great for consumers who, for whatever reason, do not want to have or can’t have a bank account. The funds are added to the card at one of 73,000 locations where the card can be “charged up” with a cash payment through the company’s own SIRE network. The cards have an initial fee of $10-20, and a monthly fee of five dollars or so.
While these cards do not yet have a Visa or Mastercard affiliation, company officials hope to organize that soon. So far, 100,000 cards have been issued. For those who want the convenience of a debit card without the headaches of a bank account, Morgan Beaumont’s no-bank debit card may be the answer.
