Federal Reserve released a set of new credit card rules that will take effect starting July 2010.  Based on these new rules, credit card companies must:

1. Raise interest rates only on new credit cards and future purchases or advances, not on current balances.
2. Give you 45 days’ notice before any changes are made to the terms of an account, including slapping on a higher penalty rate for missing payments or paying bills late. Under current rules, companies in most cases give 15 days notice.
3. Apply any payment above the minimum to the part of the balance with the highest interest rate.

Credit card companies must not:

1. Place unfair time constraints on payments. A payment could not be deemed late unless the borrower is given a reasonable period of time, such as 21 days, to pay.
2. Place too-high fees for exceeding the credit limit solely because of a hold placed on the account.
3. Unfairly compute balances in a computing tactic known as double-cycle billing.
4. Unfairly add security deposits and fees for issuing credit or making it available.
5. Make deceptive offers of credit.
6. Charge upfront fees for subprime cards (high-interest cards for people with low credit scores, typically with $500 credit limits) that exceed half of the credit-card limit, or require full repayment in less than a year.

The rules were approved by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration on Dec. 18th, 2008.

For consumers, these rules will protect those debt-ridden, cash-strapped from being charged sky-high interest rates by credit card companies.  They will also prevent consumers to fall in the trap of getting a 0% Balance Transfer card, but actually ended up paying high interest for that balance because credit card companies allocate payment to low interest balance tiers first.  Finally, credit card companies will be prevented from taking negative actions such as “universal default” against consumers.

For credit card companies, these rules will definitely shrink the profitable margin of credit card industry, since they eliminate many levers that they could use to bring profit and prevent credit risk: such as raising interests without notice, payment allocation, charging late fees etc.

All in all, while the new rules bring more power to consumer side of the game,  the credit card companies may respond by cutting credit card offerings.   While consumers may have better than before leverage to get more transparent  terms and be treated more in expectation, credit may not be as easy to obtain as before.   After all, there will still be more than a year before these rules take effect, which gives people enough time to digest the impact and take action, but one thing is certain: more and more people are taking actions to be more and more financial disciplined.

At such time, it’s even more important for consumers to find good credit cards that offer low/no fee balance transfer, here is the December list:

	Card Name	BT APR, credit needed and credit limit	Transaction Fee
	IberiaBank Visa® Platinum Rewards Card	0% for 6 mths, requires Good Credit	None
	IberiaBank Visa® Gold Cash Back Rewards Card	0% for 6 mths, requires Good Credit	None

He broke down best credit cards to two categories that serve people with different needs best. For those who regularly run a balance/debt, they should consider low rate/low fee credit cards, for those who don’t run a balance/debt, best cash back rewards credit card makes more sense. As of now these are his picks of best low rate/low fee credit cards:

	Card Name	Regular APR and Credit Needed	Fee and Intro APR
	Capital One Platinum Prestige	8.9%, requires excellent credit	No annual fee, 0% intro APR until Oct. 2009
	Capital One Platinum Prestige – Visa	8.9%, requires excellent credit	No annual fee, 0% intro APR until Oct. 2009
	Clear from American Express	as low as 10.99%, requires good credit	No fee of any kind, 0% intro APR for 12 mths
	IberiaBank Visa® Platinum Rewards Card	9 – 11% depends on creditworthiness, requires good credit	No annual fee, 0% intro APR for 6 mths, earn 1 bonus point for every $1 in qualifying net retail purchases

As for best cash back credit cards, Greg picked these:

	Card Name	Reward on each $1 spent	Fee and Regular APR
	Capital One No Hassle Cash Rewards	2% on purchases at gas stations and major grocery and drug stores, 1% cash back on others. Requires good credit	No annual fee, 13.9% regular APR
	Capital One No Hassle Cash Rewards – Young Adults	2% on purchases at gas stations and major grocery and drug stores, 1% cash back on others. Requires good credit	$29 annual fee, 16.9% regular APR
	Chase Freedom Visa	3% in Your Top 3 Everyday Spending Categories, 1% in others. Requires good credit	No annual fee, 14.99% regular APR
	Discover® More Card	5% Cashback Bonus® in categories like travel, home improvement stores, gas, groceries, restaurants, movies… 1% on others. Requires good credit	No annual fee, 10.99% regular APR

And here are his picks of the “worst” credit cards, the reason I am listing them out is in case you are holding a contrarian view…

	Card Name	Regular APR, Credit Needed and Fee	Grace period
	HSBC American Dream Card	14.99% or 21.99%, requires fair credit, no annual fee	20 days after the previous billing cycle provided you paid bal in full.
	New Millennium Bank Secured Platinum Visa®	19.5%, bad credit OK, $59 annual fee, $99 application fee	NO grace period
	New Millennium Bank Secured Platinum MasterCard®	19.5%, bad credit OK, $59 annual fee, $99 application fee	NO grace period

In my August post, I promised to follow up with updated listing of good balance transfer offers.  Here is our October list:

	Card Name	BT APR, credit needed and credit limit	Transaction Fee
	Bank of America PetRewards® Platinum Plus® Visa®	0% for 6 mths, requires Good credit	None
	Discover® Miles Card	0% until the last day of the billing period ending during October 2009. Balance transfers must be made before Jan. 1, 2009, requires Excellent credit	3% with a $75 cap
	Discover® More Card	0% until the last day of the billing period ending during October 2009. Balance transfers must be made before Jan. 1, 2009, requires Excellent credit	3% with a $75 cap
	Discover® Open Road Card	0% until the last day of the billing period ending during October 2009. Balance transfers must be made before Jan. 1, 2009, requires Excellent credit	3% with a $75 cap
	Advanta Platinum with Unlimited Rewards	0% for 15 mths, requires Good credit, max credit limit: $50,000	3% balance transfer fee with a minimum $10 and maximum $90
	The Kiva BusinessCard from Advanta	0% for 15 mths, requires Excellent credit	3% balance transfer fee with a minimum $10 and maximum $90
	BP Rewards Visa®	0% fixed APR for 12 months (Elite and Premium pricing) or three months for Standard pricing), requires Good credit	3% with a $99 cap
	Chase Business Rebate Visa®	0% for up to 12 mths, requires Good Credit	3% with a $99 cap
	Chase Free Cash Rewards Platinum Visa®	0% fixed APR for 12 months (Elite and Premium pricing) or three months for Standard pricing), requires Good Credit	3% with a $99 cap
	Chase Business Platinum Visa®	0% for up to 12 months (only those balances that are business expenses may be transferred), requires Excellent Credit	3% with a $99 cap

Note: this list might change because card companies update their terms and conditions frequently, I will publish updated list in the future.

	Card Name	APR	Transaction Fee
	The Discover® Open RoadSM Card for Students	0% for 12 mths, require Excellent Credit	3% balance transfer fee with a minimum $10 and maximum $75
	Discover® More Card	0% for 12 mths, requires Excellent Credit	3% balance transfer fee with a minimum $10 and maximum $75
	Miles by Discover® Card	0% for 6 mths, requires Excellent Credit	3% balance transfer fee with a minimum $10 and maximum $75
	Blue from American Express®	0% for up to 15 mths, requires Excellent Credit	3% with a $99 cap
	Chase Platinum Visa®	0% for 12 mths, requires Good Credit	3% with a $99 cap
	HSBC Platinum MasterCard® with Cash Back Rewards	0% for 12 mths, requires Good Credit	3% balance transfer fee with a minimum $15, no upper cap
	Capital One® Platinum Prestige	7.9%, requires Excellent Credit	None
	Bank of America Platinum Plus® Visa® Card	0% for 12 mths, requires Good Credit	3% transaction fee, no less than $10, no cap