Credit Card Offers

As QR Codes slowly gain traction in North America, their reach is being threatened by a new sleek and sexy form of image codes known as SnapTags. These new displays allow for companies to create scannable images with their logos prominently featured that facilitate communication between advertisers and consumers, and as of last month, even trigger payment mechanisms.

QR Code technology, which was created by a subsidiary of Toyota in 1994, had a long road to application from factories and into the toolbox of marketers.

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Unless you never turn the TV on, odds are, youve seen at least a few of the latest Capital One credit card commercials with either Alec Baldwin or Jimmy Fallon. These two funny men are proudly selling debt to consumers around the nation.

But do celebrities actually influence our consumer choices, especially those associated with our finances? Actually, most celebrities tend to steer clear of putting their names on anything that has to do with such an important aspect of ones life.

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Bailiffs chasing debts may be able to increase the fees they charge some debtors from £42.50 to £305 if government proposals come into force.

The coalition has opened a consultation it said was designed to “provide a major legal overhaul of the bailiff industry”, but Citizen’s Advice said the proposals do not go far enough and could even cost some debtors more.

The proposals, which aim to make minor amendments to the yet-to-be implemented Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, proposes bailiffs be allowed to charge householders an enforcement fee of £305 in the case of unpaid council tax.

Council tax bills in arrears is by far the biggest category of debt chased by bailiffs. Ci

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There are many hardware swipers available these days to turn your cell phone or iPad into a mobile credit card processing machine – but Card.io have developed a “visual swipe” technology that lets users take a photo of a credit card to process a payment.   In June, Card.io launched and allowed developers to accept payments with a photo of the customer’s credit card.  Recent updates to the technology will allow consumers to send and receive payments from a credit card photo and deposit funds directly into their checking, savings or PayPal accounts.

Between the June launch date and January 2012, Card.io has over 160 developers using the visual swipe technology app.  A user enters the total amount of money they need to charge their customer, and then takes a photograph of their customer’s credit card with their cell phone camera.  The Card.io app sends the encrypted card date via 128-bit SSL encryption out for processing, and the credit card image itself is not saved, nor is the data taken from the card.  Payments can be held in Card.io until a payout account is specified – at which time, users can transfer their credit card payments to their bank or linked PayPal accounts.

Fees for Using Card.io

If you want to use Card.io to process credit cards, you will pay 30 cents for every transaction plus 3.5% of each transaction in fees.    The transaction fees are slightly higher than the popular Square unit, which allows people to physical swipe a credit card through a tiny reader inserted into the phone or iPad, and charges 2.75% per transaction.

Benefits of Card.io

Some customers prefer Card.io credit card processing over all other forms that require physical equipment to scan a card.  With Card.io, you just need your phone with you – and no other gadgets required.

Google just cant seem to catch a break these days. With the less than ideal feedback on its new Facebook rival, Google Plus, along with several other unveilings over the past couple of years, it seems as though the search engine giant is good at, well, being a search engine giant. Now, Google Wallet is taking an embarrassing hit and announced it was suspending all of its prepaid debit and credit card capabilities. This is all due to what its calling a security flaw. Heres how it went down.

On Saturday, Google to the web and announced there was a flaw in Google Wallet.

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There’s plenty of data around on the cost of living generally, but not so much on the cost of specific things like raising a child.

According to the latest figures(pdf) from Liverpool Victoria (LV=) it costs around £218,000 to raise a child in the UK. This equates to around £10,400 a year, £865 a month or £28.44 a day.

But how does LV= get this total cost?

The figures assume a typical household where the child:

• attends a private nursery from six months until they are five as both parents will return to work
• attends state school, full time from age 5 to 18
• takes an annual holiday from the age of one
• attends university for three-years where tuition fees and living costs are paid in full by the parents

Given this typical household, various scenarios and how much they would costs were considered for the child at different ages.

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