The Future of Credit Cards
What does the future of credit cards hold for consumers? While many pundits say the future is bleak, the fact remains that credit card debt continues to climb. When will it end? Many credit card holders are already charged to their credit limits. A study released by TowerGroup indicates that more consumers are not making their payments on time and are using their credits cards less than before. The percent of bad debt has continued to climb recently. Faced with increasing bad debt, credit card companies have tightened their shotgun approach to distributing applications.
Beyond the financial outlook of credit cards, what will happen technologically in the world of credit cards? In January 2010, Mophie is set to launch a new Apples IPhone that can process credit cards. This add-on works with third party software allowing users to use an IPhone to process credit cards. This application would take mobile credit card processing to the next level.
Other further progress in the world of credit cards includes the following initiatives:
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Credit cards with biometric identification. Thumb prints would make the most sense. Would that require a huge database of everybody’s fingerprints on file? Think of the privacy issues with that. Or would each card receive an imprint of the owner’s thumb somehow and the owner would need to verify that his thumb matches the print on his card and his card only as opposed to having the thumbprint on file. What would stop somebody from stealing a new card in the mail and then activating the fingerprint first?
Credit cards that act like library cards or grocery frequent shopper cards that you only have to wave in front of a wand reader instead of actually swiping. This functionality should remove the issue whereby a person’s magnetic strip is messed up and can no longer be read properly. This would keep people from irritating sales clerks and people behind them in line since the sales clerk must now enter the credit card number by hand since the machine will not read it.
Is reduced credit card usage actually part of a continuing downward trend? Will credit cards go the way of dinosaurs, to be replaced with layaways and debit cards? Only the future will say. However, some pundits believe that we are just on one side of the pendulum. As soon as enough progress is made with reducing the amount of debt the average person has over their heads, credit card companies will begin to go out of their way to court whatever last bit of borrowing ability a person may have left.
