College Credit Cardholders

Credit Cards Education - a New Win-Win Solution

A recent public opinion poll indicates that most credit card holders are dissatisfied with credit companies' policies, criticizing them for dishonesty and profiteering. Well, perhaps it used to be this way some time ago but things are a bit different today. Credit card applications made by credit illiterate customers hurt the lender's bottom line as a result and the overall revenues decreased.

This prompted major credit industry participants to think of introducing more customer-friendly policies, or coming up with the so-called win-win situations.

What is a win-win solution? It is a guaranteed favorable outcome for all parties involved. We all know about credit card companies lowering APRs or eliminating annual fees or offering good cash back to attract more credit card applicants and so extend their customer base. In return companies do get a better feedback expressed in increasing business.

Today, a win-win situation has become one of the major objects in the sphere of credit education. Wells Fargo and some major credit companies searched for new ways of attracting young people, especially college cardholders, to credit education program, for which they performed an experiment.

The goal was to achieve win-win situation, namely to offer students some reward for their consent to participate in the education program. The reward was a mail offer of a 60-minute cell phone card and it appeared just great for many students to complete online credit education program.

What is the win-win essence of this operation? The students from the experimental group were granted a 60-minute free talk and the creditors enjoyed better payment records, in other words, full and well-timed credit card bills.

On completing the online courses of credit card education young people managed their credit cards more thoughtfully and responsibly. They carried lower credit card balances and paid them off more regularly.

So, educating people about credit cards and finances on the whole right at the start of their independent life has proved beneficial both to students and credit companies themselves. The experiment with the 60-minute phone card is a convincing example of the efficiency of win-win satiation, isn't it?

But the Center for Financial Services Innovation together with some major players such as Visa, Experian and Wells Fargo, is not satisfied with the achievement so far. Now they target all students, offering them to participate in the education program and make use of the win-win situation.

However, the lenders suggest another incentive for student credit card holders which, as they assume, will be even more popular and thus, stimulating. The new lure is free song downloads which are expected to boost the number of participants of the online credit education program.

So, can we still claim that credit companies' polices are unfair and predatory when we witness such a great concern about credit illiteracy among youngsters? What's more, the lenders do not only express the concern but also do their best to improve the situation. A win-win solution seems to be the best strategy so far, doesn't it?

Doug Nicholas

Doug Nicholas, a financial consultant by profession with a Masters degree in International Business from Brown University, is also an ardent writer. Though he has a full time job at one of the companies listed on Wall Street, he does manage to squeeze in time to follow his passion. He puts his ideas to words in his articles related to finance and business.