- MTA to Offer Free Rides for ‘Tap-and-Go’ Customers in NYC, Gets Better with Cash App Discount by DDG
- Passport Fees to Increase Effective December 27 2021 by The Gate.
- CFPB shuts down payday lender it calls ‘a darling’ of venture capital by MarkerWatch.
- Mastercard introduces accessible card for blind and partially sighted people. Really love anything that improves accessibility and independence like this.
Deals starting/expiring at the end of today or starting today (view the full deal calendar here):
- [MD, PA] NWSB Bank Bank $300 Checking Bonus
- AmEx Offers: Airbnb, Spend $250 & Get 5,000 Membership Rewards Points
Deals starting/expiring at end of tomorrow:
Popular posts from yesterday:
At first I was happy about the payday loan thing, but I read a couple articles and it’s just plain disappointing.
Most articles report that their loan business was profitable, so I imagine this 100k civil penalty squarely follows the Harvard MBA ethos that fines are ‘just a cost of doing business’ rather than something that any of their CEOs should have tried to avoid for the last 5 years.
They stopped doing loans in July of 21, so the settlement probably wasn’t hard fought. 2 years ago they split into 2 businesses – credit card business (Mission Lane) – targeting the same market with similar promises and I’m guessing moved a lot of the capital over there as well.
Profitable loan portfolios are easily sold off to another servicer.
So basically the CFPB publicly dug up a dead company and paraded it around shouting “Look at the great job we’re doing protecting the poor and marginalized!”
I know there’s a few cynical logic jumps I made, so if anyone’s got numbers I love to hear how much VC capital got burned or if any of the C suites are suffering over it.
I’m sure the fee increase will hit some people in the wallet where it hurts…the same people who complain that gas costs them $20 more to fill up, as they pump gas into their $70,000 SUV.
What’s your angle? Prices are too low?
That it’s self-indulgent to moan and complain about a $20 fee increase when this is the same class of person who can spend thousands on international travel. Or doesn’t blink about spending $50 to go into a lounge for a couple hours before a flight. Or buys $5 coffee.
Yeah, rising prices have taken a bit of bite out of my wallet. But it doesn’t change my life overall and that is a position of significant privilege.
With all the cards with global entry fee credits, it’d be nice if some were usable for passport renewals.
Can’t use credit cards for passport renewal so it’s a non-starter.
That’s currently. But If passports will soon be renewable online, how will you pay for them online if you can’t use a credit card? So maybe part of this fee increase is to allow credit cards to be used?
lol @ Passport fee.
Biden admin mandates upping our technology to be able to submit passports online instead of paper mail… So… more efficient. Oh, but we need to increase fees.
Good ol’ government, only they know how to take the more “more efficient” and turn it into “more expensive” – which makes it 100% an oxymoron.
The entire basis of efficiency is not having monkey workers whose job it is to open and organize actual pieces of paper of an application, scanning it in, entering it into databases, etc… and instead the data is directly passed. It should effectively cut the workforce in half.
Didn’t they have a much higher jump back like 10 years ago? I remember paying $75 to renew and then $110 on my last renewal.
Yeah, sort of like how cities are designed for efficiency yet things are cheaper in the desert. It’s kinda crazy how much more of an effect the inefficiency of a local government has over the efficiency of a free market.
if all the data is in the magnetic strip, why do credit cards need to be as big as their current size anyway?
Way back in they day, Citi had a keychain “card” and also I think I small card with Adhesive that you could put on another card for tap to pay only.
I wonder if there’s some kind of regulation that mandates the dimensions. I find it strange that I’ve never seen a credit card attempt to differentiate with a different shape.
On many cards today, the data is in multiple forms: on the magnetic strip, on the chip, and on the part of the card that supports contactless.
All of those “insert the card” readers (which support either chip or magnetic strip) at various kiosks (Kroger self-checkouts, many gas stations, some restaurant checkouts, etc, etc) only work with the current size. So all of those “insert the card” readers would have to be redesigned for any size change as long as magnetic strips and chips are supported.
So it’s hard for the card sizes to change until and unless it all goes to contactless only, because only contactless readers don’t need you to insert the card into a reader designed for a specific shape of card.
“on the chip, and on the part of the card that supports contactless”
The “part of the card” that supports contactless is actually the chip. If you look at one of the see-thru cards, the wire loops connect to the chip.
Di_k move by the State Department to increase fees at short notice. And then still making appointments available online only to get to the Post Office and be told those appointments/days were meant to be blocked off and no one is staffed to take passport photos/process applications.
I’ve got to imagine blind people were already cutting notches into their own cards. Nice to see MC actually implementing a good change tho.
It used to be if you intentionally defaced a credit or debit card it would not work in readers that take in the card or had technology embedded beyond the magnetic strip to prevent alteration of the card for fraudulent purposes (the entire boundary of the card could not be altered without compromising the card in those cases). Credit card companies would not support how or where could be acceptable to facilitate “blind people…already cutting notches into their own cards.” If you’ve simply GOT to imagine it, though…I guess we can’t blame you for diminishing other people’s lived experiences without any reliable first-hand information aside from what you imagine. Seems like what people imagine is true is basically the new de facto reality these days anyway, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, either. Personally, I think this is still a pretty pathetic PR grab when Discover card actually offers real Braille credit cards that one can actually read and identify while Blind.
yikes my dude. I was merely trying to state that people are ingenious and can come up with their own solutions to such problems long before CC issuers ever deigned to think about accessibility. but yeah, tear me a new one for me trying to engage I guess. be sure to grandstand about the kids these days too.
LOL…well, “merely trying” wilsonhammer, I’m pretty sure most would consider me one of those “kids these days”…but sure, I’ll “be sure” to do that for you. I sure just love it when “kids these days” can combine their knack for diminishing how easy it is to overcome obstacles to accessibility they can’t imagine and praise of a major financial services corporation under the umbrella of “trying to engage.” Surely, there should be a participation award given for “trying to engage,” rather than any reasonable expectation that a public comment would elicit community engagement from someone of relevant background to contribute their experience or a reality check when “trying to engage”…heavens forbid! Gosh, kids these days…LOL… Sure hope I met your expectations now as I wouldn’t want to be independent or share any perspective-opening information that you might not have taught yourself yet in your imagination.
There’s even a credit union in Iowa that issues braille credit cards: https://www.veridiancu.org/news/articles/braille-cards.
I’ve got to imagine that some blind people may have learned to distinguish the cards they have by telling apart the feeling of the raised card numbers.
Remember, every Visa number starts with a 4, every MC number starts with a 5, every Amex number starts with a 3, and every Discover number starts with a 6. So with raised numbers, any blind person who had only at most one of each of those would only need to learn to tell apart the first digit by feel.
But banks are now getting rid of raised card numbers (making them either totally flat or almost flat), so that option (if it indeed was useful for some blind people) is disappearing.
Passport fee changes: “The fee to renew a passport for adults is currently $110.00. Effective as of Monday, December 27, 2021, that fee will increase to $130.00”
The MasterCard video was a wholesome morning watch. Thanks.