- Walmart: EMVÂ Signatures Are Worthless by PYMNTS. Completely agree, I don’t understand why card issuers and merchants in the US are dragging their feet so much on this change. EMV + PIN drastically reduces fraud rates, that’s a win for everybody. This change will happen eventually, it’s only a matter of time but let’s make it sooner rather than later.
- Top 7 ways to milk the Club Carlson card before and after June 1 by Frequent Miler. #4 is the most interesting to me, apparently CSR’s are instructed to give 2,500 points to people that are unhappy about the change. This is another case where asking for compensation is successful. Somebody also recently mentioned they were able to get 2,000 MR points for their shoprunner benefit being less useful.
- American Express To Increase Penalty APR by Magnify Money. I’d hope none of my readers ever need to deal with penalty APRs so this shouldn’t be an issue. This is interesting because American Express also increased the normal interest rates on more than one million customers recently. Looks like they are pretty set on extracting as much profit from all their existing cardholders as possible.
- The Best Thing I Ever Did With My Tax Refund by Go Banking Rates. My response is #5, keep your tax refund as low as possible folks!
- Details of the new Priority Pass and Lounge Club lounge at Stansted revealed by Head For Points. Not sure how many of my readers transit/arrive/depart through Stansted airport in the UK, but it’s always nice to have more lounge options. I’d be surprised if you weren’t able to use Priority Pass/Lounge Club to access this one as well, which will make it useful for those with the Chase Ritz Carlton credit card.

