Credit card comparisons at your fingertips - News

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Credit card comparisons at your fingertips

By Rachel Lebihan, ZDNet Australia News
October 19, 2000
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/soa/Credit-card-comparisons-at-your-fingertips/0,139023165,120106389,00.htm

Gone are the days of trawling through credit card information brochures to compare annual fees, interest rates and bonus reward offerings. An online service is now at hand to take the pain out of the process, tipping you on the top five cards that suit your needs in a matter of seconds.

An Australian first, the credit card selector is located at themoneyshop.com.au and will search a merry-go-round of 70 different credit cards from 18 institutions, minimising the confusion consumers are up against.

And with AU$13 billion of credit card debt in Australia, it's the perfect mechanism for disgruntled credit card holders to compare how their current card rates alongside the competion.

"What Mortgage Choice did to the home loan industry is just what we're doing to the credit card industry," themoneyshop founder, Greg Smith, told ZDNet.

After answering a few questions about individual preferences, and a turnaround time of about 30 seconds, brief summaries of the five most favoured cards are given.

Once the user selects a card, they're dropped into the institution's online application page where the process can be completed online, "all in one fell swoop," Smith said.

"We're bringing people to a quick decision that can only be limited by the application process of the companies we're sending them to," Smith said.

Out of the 18 institutions, only 7 have the capability to offer a full online application process, Smith said.

And whilst Citibank may be the Australian market leader with a 60-second approval process, in the US sub 30-second online application and approval is more commonplace.

Smith believes that whilst a number of Australian institutions are currently working on straight-through online process and approval, themoneyshop's credit card selector will create greater demand for Australian institutions to provide online application processes.

"The extra demand might turn up the development process," Smith said.