What Happened to Low Interest for Credit Cards

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Time after time I hear folks tell me that they are currently paying too much interest on their personal credit cards. There has never been a period in the time of my life where I recall this was indeed the case. The average for credit card rates itself used to hover around 20% or so. Back in those days if had a bit of luck, you could locate offers well below that particular mark, and indeed you still can. It was in 2005 when the General Accounting Office conducted a survey. In this survey the government office determined that about 80 percent of persons carrying cards from the 6 largest card companies are paying under 20% APR. In itself, this is not such a bad deal when one considers all the bad flack the credit card industry has received over the years. So credit card rates are generally not so high these days but buyer beware! There are still many offers out there that have interest rates higher than 29% and other general fees as much as $39 a wack!

This concept and the current state of things reflects back to the early 80s when Risk Based Pricing was born"Risk Based Pricing" grew into it's own. This concept basically allowed card issuers to offer cards with lower costs and fees to the less risky cardholders while extending more extreme fees and costs to those in the customer base who are more credit challenged. In any case, for various reasons including changes to a firm's inner dynamic to changes in policy, this system does change. As a result the persons who are more creditworthy are left having to cover the difference by means of manifested increases to their interest rates and fees.

Generally, according to the bankrate.com website, credit cards that contain low interest tend to be represented in what is called the Platinum Card National Rate Average"Platinum Card National Rate Average". Even though fixed rates have pretty much been stable as of late. Recently they did dip down to below 10 percent in early 06, but the variable platinum interest rate has jumped to over 13 percent from 11 percent since 05. Judging from simple interest rates alone, it would make simple sense to avoid variable platinum rate cards to begin with and just stick with fixed rate ones because at no time during the past several years was it any cheaper at all to have a variable rate card based on the National Averages.

It only makes sense the deciding differences would be perks that come included with most adjustable rate offers. Just more proof that it is true that credit card rewards are just what one gets for being charged too much interest in the first place.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Sam Donaldson of Las Vegas, Nevada is the current staff writer for Credit-Cards-With-Rewards.com. A Great source for rewards credit cards and low interest rate credit cards.

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