Banking
Credit and debit cards with EMV chips mean big changes for consumers, shoppers nationwide
If you have a credit or debit card, shop in a store or eat in a restaurant, you’ll notice big changes in two months.
Oct. 1 is the deadline for banks to re-issue 1.2 billion credit and debit cards that are in circulation in the United States with new cards that contain fraud-resistant computer chips. And Oct. 1 is the deadline for retailers nationwide to upgrade 10 million card readers.
The changes are expected to eliminate about 40 percent of the credit and debit card fraud in this country. But the changes caused by those tiny computer chips will also mean you’ll have to use payment terminals differently, and this could lead to longer lines in stores and restaurants, probably for several months as consumers and companies adjust.
Alternative spending takes form of prepaid debit cards: Few local banks offer popular reloadables
As banks realize that more and more consumers want alternatives to traditional checking accounts and credit cards, nearly 60 percent of banks nationwide now offer prepaid gift cards or reloadable debit cards.
In some cases, these cards are an alternative for people who don’t want or can’t qualify for checking accounts or credit cards. In others, they’re purchased as gift cards by or for people who want spending they don’t have to track or get a bill for later.
View Story
New .sucks domain could cause headaches for banks, laughs for trolls
If you go to the website keybank.sucks or pncbank.sucks later this year, you probably won’t find anything negative about KeyBank or PNC Corp.
The Cleveland banking powerhouses face the question this spring of whether to buy those website domains — with the new .sucks suffix — to keep some Internet trolls out there from creating unflattering websites about the Fortune 500 companies.
The new domain suffix, .sucks, is being gobbled up by companies nationwide that want to stop some unsatisfied customer or hate-monger from spewing bad things about them with a sexy domain that ends in sucks.
View Story
New trend in checking accounts: You can’t write checks
Welcome to the next generation of checking accounts: With these, you’re not allowed to have checks.
The latest rage among banks from PNC to Key to Chase to Fifth Third is an account that looks and smells like a checking account in almost every way except that you don’t have a checkbook.
View Story