Credit Card Debts : Causes and Prevention

The above statistic is get from Malay Mail. (read more)

Credit card services are intended to make our life easier; however it had misuse by public and causes them facing a lot of credit card debt. The following is the causes and prevention on credit card debts.

1. Lack of financial management
This is the most common mistakes done by credit card holders. Financial management can let you determine how much you can spend such as prepare a budget for bill payment. However, due to poor financial management (i.e. lack of cash) had delayed their monthly payment and been charged a high late fee at higher rates.

To ensure you won’t be missing any payment, you can set up an automatic bill pay transfer to settle your monthly bill. As a holder, you can always remind yourself for each payment due by keeping a calendar in your mobile phone.

2. Excessive spending
Most of the time, you might attracted by some items and will just take out the credit card and swipe it without considering whether is it needed. This is very dangerous if you keep buy something beyond your means because this will make you become a credit card slave.

Again, please always make a budget on what actually is your necessary expense for each month and stick to it. Always ask yourself, “is this price is within my budget? Or do I really need it?”

3. Income level had been reduced
Before this, you might be a top salesperson who is earned a high commission. However, due to recession, you are unable to gain as much income as before. If you do not trim excess expenses to match with your new income, you might in trouble to settle your monthly charges.

Therefore, you are advised to create a new budget according to your new income and cut down any unnecessary expenses to get your spending under control.

4. Rely too much on using credit card
You might think that the easy way to make payment for the expensive stuffs is just pull out a credit card and swipe the payment rather than pay cash. But if you do not have much money in your wallet, it indicates that you do not have much money to settle your debt later too.

This behavior will make you trap into debt, therefore, always think twice before purchase and be aware that cash in wallet indicate how much you are able to pay for the bills when it comes to due.

reference: http://www.3debtconsolidation.com/creditcardmistakes.html

Review on a post on e-tailing from My E-Commerce blog

The article titled “OpenTable.com - Online restaurant reservations” on http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/e-Tailing is one of the examples of e-tailing.

Have you ever reserve movie tickets online? If yes, online restaurant reservation also works similar with that. OpenTable.com is the most popular website for public to make restaurant reservation online. It is joined by more than 10,000 restaurants from more than 50 countries and trusted by 100 million diners around the world.

OpenTable.com transforms pens and papers into a dynamic reservation. The reservation online costs the diner nothing and OpenTable.com will give you the same result as you placing through a phone call but it is processed with just a click. Now that a question arises, how the customers know whether their reservations will receive by the restaurant? Customers’ reservation will immediately record in restaurant’s computerized reservation book which has live internet connections into the restaurant once the reservation is made.

No doubt that making restaurant reservation through OpenTable.com is beneficial. Guess what? OpenTable.com is so attentive that it can track customers’ special occasion such as anniversary and birthday. Tired of waiting with your lovers to get a romantic dinner in a crowded restaurant? Perhaps you might try OpenTable.com

For more information, you can click the link below to view OpenTable.com's video.
http://www.opentable.com/info/video.aspx

Mobile Payment System in Malaysia: Its potential and customers' adoption strategies

Mobile payment (m-payment) system is an alternative payment method. M-payment is the collection of money from a consumer via mobile dive such as mobile phone, Smartphone, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or other devices. It is a new and rapidly adopting strategy for consumer make payment. It is broadly wide use in Asia and Europe especially in Filipina, because consumers can easily use a mobile phone to pay any fee instead of paying with cash, check or credit card.

In year 2001, this technology finally reached and launched in Malaysia. The success of this technology is hugely based on the number of mobile devices users. As mobile device is popular, m-payment system released to meet the tidal current. The use of m-payment not only convenient to those who live in city, on the other hand it has more impact to people live in rural places compare to city, because rural places is difficult to make any payment or shop, m-payment will fit perfectly in this situation. For an example, Citibank mobile payment allowed customers to use their mobile payment to pay bills by deducting the amount from their credit card. http://www.cbronline.com/news/citibank_malaysia_launches_mobile_bill_payment_service

As m-payment system released, a lot of companies have released shopping through mobile services such as ticket purchases, digital goods and will increase through time. We can even use m-payment to pay bills, such as water and electric bills as well. We could easily done those thing by using a single mobile device, instead of queuing and spend a lot of time. It is a potential system and it will develop successfully with no doubts. Maxis, Maybank and Nokia have teamed with Visa to offer Visa payWave on mobile payment. http://marketing-interactive.com/news/12091

In order to make use of this system widely, lot more services must be provided. So users got the opportunity to use this system more frequently, for example shop for fashion with m-payment. Benefit offer when using this system will help a lot too, like telecommunication company offer gifts to those who call or received call with mobile device by giving free sms or call time. Most importantly, this system will need to provide good security, in order to built up users confidents, simplified the processes and lower the charging cost when using the system.

The Application of Pre-paid Cash Card for Consumer

Pre-paid cash card is a card that consumers load money in before they pay. It looks like credit and debit cards and can be use the same way as credit or debit card. Consumers can only spend the balance that has been preloaded onto the card.

Some provider will charge consumers for application fees but there are some free of charge if you top them up with a minimum amount of money. Consumers will have to pay annual fees of RM 9.90, but there are no interest and late charges.

An example of pre-paid cash card is Tune Prepaid Visa Card.

• Pre-paid card is easy to use and can be use anywhere visa is accepted.

• It is easily available to consumers because there is no credit check which means you can get a card without worrying about your credit history.

• With a pre-paid cash card consumers will have no chance of spending too much as they are limited to the amount that is in their card.

• Consumers can withdraw money from the pre-paid card worldwide. It is globally accepted.

• The card can be use to purchase airline ticket and reload mobile phone.

• Pre-paid cash card will be useful if consumers are going to oversea for holiday. It offers a better exchange rate than foreign exchange providers.

References:

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/c/prepaid-cards/guide/3/

http://www.creditcard2u.net/paypal/choosing-a-right-prepaid-visa-card-paypal-withdrawal-debit-card