Credit Card Debts : Causes and Prevention (week 5)

A Credit Card is a system of payment named after the small plastic card issued to users of the system. In the case of credit cards, the issuer lends money to the consumer to be paid later to the merchant. It is different from a charge card, which requires the balance to be paid in full each month. In contrast, a credit card allows the consumer to 'revolve' their balance, at the cost of having interest charged. Most credit cards are issued by local banks or Credit Unions, and are the same shape and size, as specified by the ISO 7810 standard.

Credit card debt is an example of unsecured consumer debt, accessed through ISO 7810 plastic credit cards. Debt results when a client of a credit card company purchases an item or service through the card system. Debt accumulates and increases via interest and penalties when the consumer does not pay the company for the money he or she has spent. When a consumer

has been late on a payment, it is possible that other creditors, even creditors the consumer was not late in paying, may increase the interest rates the consumer is paying. This practice is called universal default.

Causes
Sometimes the late fees, high Annual Percentage Rate (APRs), and universal default overcome consumers who frequently do not pay off their debt, and the customer declares bankruptcy. If a customer files for bankruptcy, the credit card companies are required to forgive all or much of the debt, unless such discharge of debt is successfully challenged by one or more creditors, or blocked by a bankruptcy judge on legal grounds irrespective of creditors' challenges.

Prevention

The best way to get rid of debt, experts agree, is to attack the balance with the highest annual percentage rate first. When that one is paid off, move onto the debt with the next-highest interest rate.

"The amount you owe doesn't really matter when you're paying an enormous amount of interest," "Try to pay the highest interest rate ones first. Muster all the funds available and get the debt out of your life."

Electronic Currency (week 5)

Electronic Currency or known as Electronic money that included e-money, electronic cash, digital money, digital cash or digital currency which refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. Typically, this involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit are examples of electronic money. Also, it is a collective term for financial cryptography and technologies enabling it.

Technically electronic or digital money is a system of debits to exchange value, within another system. Also sometimes the term electronic money is used to refer to the provider itself. Many systems will sell their electronic currency directly to the end user, such as Paypal and WebMoney, but other systems, such as e-gold, sell only through third party digital currency exchangers.

The main focuses of digital cash development are being able to use it through a wider range of hardware such as secured credit cards. Followed by, linking bank accounts that would generally be used over an internet means, for exchange with a secure micropayment system such as in large corporations (PayPal).

Although digital cash can provide many benefits such as convenience and privacy, increased efficiency of transactions, lower transaction fees, and new business opportunities with the expansion of economic activities on the Internet, there are many potential issues with the use of digital cash. The transfer of digital currencies raises local issues such as how to levy taxes or the possible ease of money laundering. There are also potential macroeconomic effects such as exchange rate instabilities and shortage of money supplies (total amount of digital cash versus total amount of real cash available, basically the possibility that digital cash could exceed the real cash available). These issues may only be addressable by some type of cyberspace regulations or laws that regulate the transactions and watch for signs of trouble.

For more infomation. Please visit http://www.wikipedia.org/

Mobile Payment Systems in Malaysia (week 5)

Introduction

Mobile payment also may refer to as mobile web payment or WAP billing. It is the collection of money from a consumer via a mobile device such as their Mobile Phone, Smart Phone, Personal Digital Assistant or known as PDA and many more. There are lots of stuff can be purchased through mobile payment. For example, Music, videos, ring tones, games, wallpapers and other digital goods.

In Malaysia, http://www.ecapay.com/ is well known online payment gateway which facilitates Malaysian domestic payment. With Malaysia Direct Debit we provide direct access to Malaysia’s domestic direct debit (online banking) pay-ments. Ecapay currently supports Hong Leong Bank, Public Bank, CIMB(Bank Bumiputra Commerce, Bank Islam, Maybank and Pospay. For more information please visit : -

http://www.ecapay.com/article7.html?gclid=CPa2kcu0iJQCFQdIegodkSdUXA

For further information, there are two primary types of mobile payments which is the older type of transaction payment which is the Premium SMS based transactional payments and now already advanced to the Mobile Web payments (WAP)

Potential

The Mobile Web payment allowed consumers to uses web pages displayed on their mobile phone to make a payment. This process is quickly replacing premium SMS based transactional payments for digital content and also enables the sale of physical goods. Using a familiar web payment model gives a number of proven benefits of such as flow on sales, high customer satisfaction and yet easy to use.

Consumer adoption strategies

Mobile payments are commonly expected to increase consumer convenience by reducing the need for coins and cash in small transactions and increasing the availability of purchase possibilities. Consumer chooses to make a mobile payment. They interact with the payment server using their mobile device to authenticate or authorize the payment. They are subsequently presented with status showing confirmation of the successful transaction or failure with a reason. Extensions to this include Near Field Communications or Contact less Payment options using additional hardware built into the mobile phone. Few researches has made where teenagers from 14-15 years old, young adults where they have entered working life and most of them are in their twenties and middle aged members of a hobby group where most of them are between 50-59 years old.