Australians with credit cards will see some fees relating to the products scrapped as part of a clampdown on banks by the government.
Under the proposals, credit card holders will not be forced to pay charges if they go over their credit limits, while financial institutions will also be banned from offering to raise restrictions for their customers.
Those with credit cards will not be able to exceed their limit by more than ten per cent and chief executive of the Australian Bankers Association Steven Munchenburg was quoted by the Australian Financial Review as saying: “Everyone now knows they can go over their credit limit by ten per cent and the bank cant do anything about it.”
According to the news source, customers will save hundreds of millions of dollars per year as a result of the change, which will come into force in July.
Transactions made overseas that take the customer over the ten per cent limit will also be rejected.
Recent research by watchdog Choice revealed ATM users have to pay as much as $4 to withdraw cash while in a foreign country.
But What About Nokia?
Sometimes people expect you to hit nothing but home runs (like Apple) and surpass their wildest expectations (like Google). Then there are times when folks dont expect a helluva lot from a company and yet they consistently manage to deliver under the wire. That pretty much sums up RIMs (Research in Motion) track record the past few years:
– Consistently lower sales projections quarter after quarter with lower actual sales quarter after quarter
– Roll-out a tablet that has to shine above the iPad in at least one or two (if not a number of) key areas leaving people to wonder if anyone in Waterloo, Ontario had bothered to buy/reverse engineer an iPad
– Sneak the introduction of an AppleTV competitor even as Jobs said it was a hobby idea (he tends to do that when the product doesnt fly off the shelves) and there are a hundred or so similar products that have been finding anemic acceptance over the past two years
Based on stock market value RIM was the shining jewel in Canadas crown just a few years ago valued at $80 billion.
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Public sector lender UCO Bank is harboring ambitious plans to increase its ATM count in the country. The bank aims to take its network to 3000 ATMs by 2013.
The present ATM count of the bank stands at 681, informed a top bank official. By the end of this fiscal, it aims it ATM count to reach 1500.
It has also come up with a scheme called ‘total freedom’ in a bid to increase the share of its CASA deposits.
The bank plans that by the end of 2012, the CASA share should reach 35% from 24% presently.
“We are targeting 25 lakh accountholders under the ‘Total Freedom’ campaign,” Mr S. Rajaram, Field General Manager, UCO Bank said.
Run for the Borders!
I told you back in January and now I really mean it: If you have a Borders gift card you’ve been meaning to redeem, do it now. Now. Let the dog walk himself. Skip the weekly lunch bunch. Tell your boss you have to leave early because you have to meet the sprinkler guy. Whatever. But go as soon as you can, either directly to the store, or online, and cash out that card.
Borders, the long-troubled bookstore, announced Monday it was ending its effort to sell off its assets and would begin liquidation under Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, with stores closing as early as Friday. The liquidation process will run through September.
For now, the company’s websites still cheerily promise that its business operations continue as normal, but that’s only because it hasn’t updated the pages since it began to seek a buyer for itself.
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– Stocks fell more than 1 percent on Monday as concerns the United States and Europe were not coming to grips with their debt problems battered bank shares.
U.S. lawmakers scrambled to avoid a government debt default as the Treasury approached the statutory $14.3 trillion limit on borrowing, while the euro zone’s regulatory stress tests for banks were viewed as unrealistic, given the region’s fiscal crisis.
Bank of America Corp fell 4 percent to $9.61 and was the biggest percentage loser in the S&P 500 index. U.S.-listed shares of Barclays Plc dropped 8 percent to $13.35. Both hit 52-week lows.
“The decline is playing off of the uncertain economic environment and the constraints those banks have been placed under,” said Larry Peruzzi, senior equity trader at Cabrera Capital Markets Inc in Boston.
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– General Motors Co will not make any product commitments “solely” to achieve a deal with the United Auto Workers union in upcoming contract talks, the automaker’s top labor executive said on Monday.
“We certainly aren’t going to make a decision and make a commitment solely as a way of getting an agreement,” said Cathy Clegg, GM vice president of labor relations. “If the market doesn’t drive it, we can’t do that.”
Talks between the UAW and the three U.S. automakers begin next week with GM slated to start negotiations on July 27. UAW officials have repeatedly said that adding jobs will be the union’s priority in the upcoming negotiations.
“This country has to come back with jobs,” Joe Ashton, the UAW vice president in charge of GM relations, told reporters, later adding, “We’ve got a tough set of negotiations coming up.
“The vast majority of members want jobs and they want job security,” he added.
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A new scheme being considered by the Commonwealth Bank could enable Aussies to deactivate their credit cards while abroad.
Matthew Keaney, electronic crime executive manager at the financial institution, explained that this would prevent people from using their plastic in offshore ATMs, reports ZDNet.com.
However, Australians considering going online to compare credit cards might be encouraged by the fact that it could also reduce the instances of details being used fraudulently by scammers overseas.
Mr Keaney said the technology may be deployed sometime in the “near future”.
This comes after News.com.au cited figures from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that revealed Australians reported twice as many scams last year compared with the preceding 12 months.
A total of $63 million is thought to have been stolen from people in the country.
Peter Kell, deputy chair and head of the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce, warned Aussies to “never send money or give credit card details to anyone you dont know or trust”.
– “We are sorry,” Rupert Murdoch said in British newspapers on Saturday, as News Corp tried to quell the uproar over a phone-hacking scandal that has shaken the company and claimed its top two newspaper executives.
In full-page adverts, Murdoch pledged “concrete steps” to resolve the issue in a bid to regain the initiative after losing Les Hinton, head of Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and Rebekah Brooks, head of News Corp’s British newspaper arm, on Friday.
But some questioned if the apologies and resignations would allay public and political anger over allegations the Murdoch-owned News of the World newspaper hacked thousands of phones, including that of a murdered 13-year-old girl.
The scandal forced Murdoch to close the best-selling Sunday paper, and drop a $12 billion plan to buy full control of highly profitable pay-TV operator BSkyB.
“The News of World was in the business of holding others to account.
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– Stocks will be hard pressed to turn the tide of recent selling next week as political jousting over raising the United States’ debt ceiling intensifies.
The benchmark S&P 500 index this week recorded its worst weekly loss in five weeks.
Investors, frustrated by the lack of progress in the debate between the Democrat-controlled White House and Senate and the Republican-majority House, could move into what are perceived as safer assets, such as cash.
While the wrangling over the debt ceiling takes center stage, earnings season will continue to heat up after a solid first week.
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