On July 12th, the Bank of Canada did what it hasn’t done for seven years – it raised interest rates. Economists had been speculating for weeks that Canada’s central bank would raise interest rates and that’s indeed what happened. Based on strong employment numbers and GDP growth, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz decided the time was right and hiked the overnight lending rate. It went from 0.5 percent to 0.75 percent, an increase of 25 basis points.
We recently wrote about the possibility of merchants being able to add surcharges on credit card transactions. This week we thought I’d be interesting to look at what’s happening south of the border. The U.S. is known for big portion sizes, Major League Baseball and Wall Street, but it’s also known for generous credit card offers. If you think credit cards are generous in Canada, that’s nothing compared to the U.S. Flashy bonuses and hefty cash-back are a regular occurrence there. But with credit card landscape changing stateside, the good times could be coming to an end.
An important court ruling came out this month that all credit cardholders should be watching closely. Your favourite retailer may soon be able to start charging you extra to pay by credit card. This practice was previously banned. It’s all because of a settlement agreement reached in a class action lawsuit against credit card kingpins Mastercard and Visa.
Air Canada is parting ways with longtime partner Aeroplan, come June 2020. But don’t despair if you’re a frequent flyer on Air Canada flights. Air Canada is launching its own loyalty rewards program to appease its loyal customers.
There seems to be a never-ending game of cat and mouse going on between credit card companies and fraudsters. Technology keeps evolving to keep your credit card protected. In an effort to stay one step ahead of the “bad guys,” MasterCard is testing out a new security feature on its credit cards.
Chip and PIN move over, there’s a new security feature in town. MasterCard is mixing biometrics with plastic. In its new credit cards, they’re validated with the cardholder’s fingerprint and include a sensor to read it. MasterCard boasts fingerprint validation as more secure than chip and PIN, as it’s not easy to replicate.
Today there are plenty of technologies with “smart” as part of their title – Smart TVs, smartphones and smart cars, to name a few. But not everything with “smart” in their name is a smashing success. Case in point, the smart card. It looks like the concept of a smart card or a “card full of cards” is totally dead – before it even hit the marketplace.
