query: Receive credit card payment sending my customer details to a credit card processing company?

positive: Yes, there are a bunch. I have used Paypal and it worked quite nicely. I see endless ads these days for Square, a tiny card reader that you plug into a smartphone that lets you swipe the card. (With Paypal you have to type in the credit card number.)

negative: When you start at a new job here in the U.S., the default means of payment is usually a paper check. Most folks will quickly set up direct deposit so that their employer deposits their paycheck directly into their personal bank account - the incentive to do so is that you receive your funds faster than if you deposit a paper check.  Even if you set up direct deposit on your first day on the job, you may still receive your first paycheck as a paper check simply because the wheels of payroll processing turn slowly at some (large) companies. A counter example is a self-employed contractor - perhaps a carpenter or house painter.  These folks are paid by their customers, homeowners and such.  Many larger, well established contracters now accept credit card payments from customers, but smaller independents may be reluctant to set up a credit card merchant account to accept payment by card because of all the fees that are associated with accepting credit card payments.  3% transaction fees and monthly service fees can be scary to any businessman who already has very thin profit margins.  In such cases, these contractors prefer to be paid by check or in cash for the simple reason that there are no fees deducted from cash payments. There are a few folks here who don't trust direct deposit, or more specifically, don't trust their employer to perform the deposit correctly and on time.  Some feel uncomfortable giving their bank info to their employer, fearing someone at the company could steal money from their account. In my experience, the folks who prefer a paper paycheck are often the same folks who rush to the bank on payday to redeem their paychecks for cash.  They may have a bank account (helps with check cashing) but they prefer to carry cash. I operate in a manner similar to you - I use a debit card or credit card (I only have one of each) for nearly all transactions in daily life, I use electronic payments through my bank to pay my regular bills and mortgage, and I receive my paycheck by direct deposit.  There have been periods where I haven't written or received paper checks for so long that I have to hunt for where I put my checkbook! Even though I use a debit card for most store purchases, the bank account behind that debit card is actually a checking account according to the bank.  Again, the system defaults to paper checks and you have the option of going electronic as well. Before we judge anyone who doesn't use direct deposit or who prefers to be paid in cold hard cash, consider that direct deposit is a luxury of stability. Steady job, home, etc.  Direct deposit doesn't make sense for a contractor or day laborer who expect to work for a different person each day or week. I don't think this is all that unique to the US.  There are people in every city and country who don't have long-term employment with a single employer and therefore prefer cash or paper check over electronic payments.   I'd be willing to bet that this applies to the majority of people on the planet, actually.

negative: when they make the most money off of charging interest on late payments? This is incorrect. Do you have any data to back this? In the past decade there was a tendency by financial institutions to make money from late payments and there were certain rewards / incentives for people who paid late. However the bubble cracked soon enough and there were huge losses in the card industry. Today most of the revenue for card companies is from margins on customers who pay on time and growth avenues are promoting to pay every transaction by card. why do they actively seek people who pay their bills on time (as evidence by requiring good credit scores to get approved for a card), instead of they opposite? As indicated above. Remember if one customer defaults it wipes out margins made by tons of customers. In spite of giving credit to people with good credit score, the average credit card debit an US individual holds is still quite high.

negative: "To avoid nitpicks, i state up front that this answer is applicable to the US; Europeans, Asians, Canadians, etc may well have quite different systems and rules. You have nothing to worry about if you pay off your credit-card statement  in full on the day it is due in timely fashion. On the other hand, if you routinely carry a balance from month to month or have taken out cash advances, then making whatever payment you want to make that month ASAP will save you more in finance charges than you could ever earn on the money in your savings account. But, if you pay off each month's balance in full, then read the fine print about when the payment is due very carefully: it might say that payments received before 5 pm will be posted the same day, or it might say before 3 pm, or before 7 pm EST, or noon PST, etc etc etc. As JoeTaxpayer says, if you can pay on-line with a guaranteed day for the transaction (and you do it before any deadline imposed by the credit-card company), you are fine.  My bank allows me to write ""electronic"" checks on its website, but a paper check is mailed to the credit-card company. The bank claims that if I specify the due date, they will mail the check enough in advance that the credit-card company will get it by the due date, but do you really trust the USPS to deliver your check by noon, or whatever? Besides the bank will put a hold on that money the day that check is cut. (I haven't bothered to check if the money being held still earns interest or not).  In any case, the bank disclaims all responsibility for the after-effects (late payment fees, finance charges on all purchases, etc) if that paper check is not received on time and so your credit-card account goes to ""late payment"" status.  Oh, and my bank also wants a monthly fee for its BillPay service (any number  of such ""electronic"" checks allowed each month). The BillPay service does include payment electronically to local merchants and utilities that have accounts at the bank and have signed up to receive payments electronically. All my credit-card companies allow me to use their website to authorize them to collect the payment that I specify from my bank account(s). I can choose the day, the amount, and which of my bank accounts they will collect the money from, but I must do this every month. Very conveniently, they show a calendar for choosing the date with the due date marked prominently, and as mhoran_psprep's comment points out, the payment can be scheduled well in advance of the date that the payment will actually be made, that is, I don't need to worry about being without Internet access because of travel and thus being unable to login to the credit-card website to make the payment on  the date it is due. I can also sign up for AutoPay which takes afixed amount/minimum payment due/payment in full (whatever I choose)  on the date due, and this will happen month after month after month  with no further action necessary on my part.  With either choice,  it is up to the card company to collect money from my account on the day specified, and if they mess up, they cannot charge late payment fees or finance charge on new purchases etc.  Also, unlike  my bank, there are no fees for this service. It is also worth noting that many people do not like the idea of the credit-card company withdrawing money from their bank account, and so this option is not to everyone's taste."

negative: "There absolutely is a specific model that makes this so popular with so many credit card companies, and that model is ""per transaction fees"". Card companies also receive cost-sharing incentives from certain merchants. There is also a psychological reasoning as an additional incentive. When you want to accept credit cards as a source of payment as a business, you generally have three kinds of fees to pay: monthly/yearly subscription fees, percentage of transaction fee, and per transaction fee.  The subscription fees can be waived and sometimes are expressed as a ""minimum cost"", so the business pays a certain amount whether you actually have people use credit cards or not. Many of these fees don't actually make it to the credit card companies, as they just pay the service providers and middle-men processing companies. The percentage of transaction fee means that the business accepting payment via credit card must pay a percentage usually ranging from 1-3% of the total transactions they accept. So if they get paid $10,000 a month by customers in the form of credit cards, the business pays out $100-300 a month to the credit card processor - a good portion of which will make it back to the credit card issuing company, and is a major source of income for them. The per transaction fee means that every time a transaction is run involving a card, a set fee is incurred by the business (which is commonly anywhere from $0.05 to $0.30 per transaction). If that $10,000 a month business mentioned previously had 10 customers paying $1,000 each at $0.10 a transaction, that's only $1 in fees to the credit card processors/companies. But if instead that business was a grocery store with an average transaction of $40, that's $25 in fees.  This system means that if you are a credit card company and want to encourage people to make a specific kind of purchase, you should encourage purchases that people make many times for relatively small amounts of money. In a perfect world you'd want them to buy $1 bottles of water 5 times a day with their credit card. If the card company had 50,000 card holders doing this, at the end of 1 year the company would have $91,250,000 spread across 91,250,000 transactions. The card company might reasonably make $0.05 per transaction and %1 of the purchase total. The Get Rewarded For Drinking More campaign might earn the card company $912,500 in percentage fees and over $4.5 million in transaction fees. Yet the company would only have to pay 3% in rewards from the percentage fees, or $2.7 million, back to customers. If the card company had encouraged using your credit card for large once-yearly purchases, they would actually pay out more money in rewards than they collect in card-use fees. Yet by encouraging people to make small transactions very often the card company earns a nice net-income even if absolutely every customer pays their balance in full, on time, and pays no annual/monthly fees for their card - which obviously does not happen in the real world. No wonder companies try so hard to encourage you to use your card all the time! For card companies to make real money they need you to use your credit card. As discussed above, the more often you use the card the better (for them), and there can be a built-in preference for small repeated transactions. But no matter what the size of transaction, they can't make the big bucks if you don't use the card at all! Selling your personal information isn't as profitable if they don't have in-depth info on you to sell, either. So how do they get you to make that plastic sing? Gas and groceries are a habit. Most people buy one or the other at least once a weak, and a very large number of us make such purchases multiple times a week. Some people even make such purchases multiple times a day! So how do people pay for such transactions? The goal of the card companies is to have you use their product to pay as much as possible. If you pay for something regularly you'll keep that card in your wallet with you, rather than it getting lost in a drawer at home. So the card companies want you to use your card as a matter of habit, too. If you use a card to buy for gas and groceries, why wouldn't you use it for other things too? Lunch, dinner, buying online? If the card company pays out more and makes less for large, less-regular purchases, then the ideal for them is to have you use the card for small regular purchase and yet still have you use the card for larger infrequent purchases even if you get reduced/no rewards. What better way to achieve all these goals than to offer special rewards on gas and groceries? And because it's not a one-time purchase, you aren't so likely to game the system; no getting that special 5% cash-back card, booking your once-per-decade dream vacation, then paying it off and cancelling it soon after - which would actually make the card company lose money on the deal. In the end, credit card companies as a whole have a business model that almost universally prefers customers who use their products regularly and preferably for small amounts a maximum number of times. They want to reduce their expenses (like rewards paid out) while maximizing their revenue. They haven't figured out a better way to do all of this so well as to encourage people to use their cards for gas and groceries - everything else seems like a losing proposition in comparison. The only time this preference differs is when they can avoid paying some or all of the cost of rewards, such as when the merchants themselves honor the rewards in exchange for reduced or zero payment from the card companies. So if you use an airline card that seems to give you 10% back in airline rewards? Well, that's probably a great deal for the card company if the airline provides that reward at their own expense to try to boost business. The card company keeps the transaction-related fees and pays out almost nothing in rewards - the perfect offer (for them)!  And this assumes no shenanigans like black-out periods, ""not valid with any other offers"" rewards like on cars where only a fool pays full MSRP (and sometimes the rewards are tagged in this sort of way, like not valid on sale/clearance items, etc), expiring rewards, the fact that they know not everyone uses their rewards, annual fees that are greater than the rewards you'll actually be obtaining after accounting for all the other issues, etc. And credit card industries are known for their shenanigans!"

negative: "The preferred accounts are designed to hope you do one of several things: Pay one day late.  Then charge you all the deferred interest. Many people think If they put $X a month aside, then pay just before the 6 months, 12 moths or no-payment before 2014 period ends then I will be able to afford the computer, carpet, or furniture. The interest rate they will charge you if you are late will be buried in the fine print. But expect it to be very high. Pay on time, but now that you have a card with their logo on it.  So now you feel that you should buy the accessories from them. They hope that you become a long time customer. They want to make money on your next computer also. Their ""Bill Me Later"" option on that site as essentially the same as the preferred account. In the end you will have another line of credit. They will do a credit check. The impact, both positive and negative, on your credit picture is discussed in other questions.  Because two of the three options you mentioned in your question (cash, debit card) imply that you have enough cash to buy the computer today, there is no reason to get another credit card to finance the purchase. The delayed payment with the preferred account, will save you about 10 dollars (2000 * 1% interest * 0.5 years).  The choice of store might save you more money, though with Apple there are fewer places to get legitimate discounts. Here are your options: How to get the limit increased: You can ask for a temporary increase in the credit limit, or you can ask for a permanent one. Some credit cards can do this online, others require you to talk to them. If they are going to agree to this, it can be done in a few minutes. Some individuals on this site have even been able to send the check to the credit card company before completing the purchase, thus ""increasing"" their credit limit. YMMV. I have no idea if it works.  A good reason to use the existing credit card, instead of the debit card is if the credit card is a rewards card. The extra money or points can be very nice. Just make sure you pay it back before the bill is due. In fact you can send the money to the credit card company the same day the computer arrives in the mail.  Having the transaction on the credit card can also get you purchase protection, and some cards automatically extend the warranty."

negative: FICO is a financial services company, whose customers are financial services companies.  Their products are for the benefit of their customers, not consumers. The purpose of the credit score system is two-fold.  First, the credit score is intended to make it easy for lending institutions (FICO's customers) to assess the risk of loans that they make.  This is probably based on science, although the FICO studies and even the FICO score formula are proprietary secrets. The second purpose of the credit score is to incentivize consumers into borrowing money.  And they have done a great job of that.  If you think you might need a loan in the future, perhaps a mortgage or a car loan, you need a credit score.  And the only way to get a credit score is to start borrowing money now that you don't need.   Yes, someone with a good income and a long history of paying utility bills on time would be a great credit risk for a mortgage.  However, that person will have no credit score, and therefore be declared by FICO as a bad credit risk.  On the other hand, someone with a low income, who struggles, but succeeds, to make the minimum payment on their credit card, would have a better credit score.  The advice offered to the first person is start borrowing money now, even though you don't need it. I'm not anti-credit card.  I use a credit card responsibly, paying it off in full every month.  I use it for the convenience.  I don't worry at all about my credit score, but I've been told it is great.  However, there are some people that cannot use a credit card responsibly.  The temptation is too great.  Perhaps they are like problem gamblers, I don't know.  But FICO and the financial services industry have created a system that makes a credit card a necessity in many ways.  These are the people that get hurt in the current system.

negative: I am like you with not acknowledging balances in my accounts, so I pay my credit card early and often.  Much more than once a month.  With my banks bill pay, I can send money to the credit card for free and at any time.   I pay it every two weeks (when I get paid), and I will put other extra payments on there if I bought a large item.  It helps me keep my balances based in reality in Quicken. For example, I saved the cash for my trip, put the trip on my credit card, then paid it all off the day after I got home.  I used the card because I didn't want to carry the cash, I wanted the rewards cash back, I wanted the automatic protection on the car rental, and I couldn't pay for a hotel with cash. There are many good reasons to use credit cards, but only if you can avoid carrying a balance.

negative: "As documented in MyFICO (http://www.myfico.com/credit-education/whats-in-your-credit-score/), there are several factors that affect credit scores. Payment history (35%) The first thing any lender wants to know is whether you've paid past   credit accounts on time. This is one of the most important factors in   a FICO® Score. As @Ben Miller mentioned, checking your credit report to determine whether or not late payments were reported to credit bureaus will give you a sense of whether or not this was effected. You mentioned several bounced payments, which certainly could have caused this. This would be my largest concern with a closed account, is to investigate why and what was reported to the bureaus, and in turn, other lenders. Also, since this has the highest impact on credit scores (35%), it's arguably, the most important. This is further detailed here, which details the public record and late payment effect on your score. Amounts owed (30%) Having credit accounts and owing money on them does not necessarily   mean you are a high-risk borrower with a low FICO® Score....However,   when a high percentage of a person's available credit is been used,   this can indicate that a person is overextended, and is more likely to   make late or missed payments. Given that this card was closed, whatever your credit limit was is now no longer added into your total credit limit. However, your utilization on that card is gone (assuming it gets paid off), depending on any other credit lines, and since you reported ""heavy use"" that could be a positive impact, though likely not. Length of credit history (15%) In general, a longer credit history will increase your FICO® Scores.   However, even people who haven't been using credit long may have high   FICO Scores, depending on how the rest of the credit report looks. Depending how old your card was, and particularly since this was your only credit card, it will likely impact your average age of credit lines, depending on other lines of credit (loans etc) you have open. This accounts for about 15% of your score, so not as large of an impact as the first two.  Credit mix in use (10%) FICO Scores will consider your mix of credit cards, retail accounts,   installment loans, finance company accounts and mortgage loans. Given that this was your only credit card, your loan mix has been reduced (possibly to none). New credit (10%) Research shows that opening several credit accounts in a short period   of time represents a greater risk - especially for people who don't   have a long credit history. This focuses on credit inquiries, which as you mentioned, you will likely have another either re-opening this credit card or opening another at some point in the future.  Regardless, paying off the rest of that card is a priority, as interest rates on average credit cards are over 13%, and often higher (source). This rate comes into play when not paying the balance in full every month, and also as @Ben Miller suggested, I would not utilize a credit card without being able to pay it in full. It can often be a dangerous cycle of debt."

negative: The workaround solution is to simply avoid having an exactly zero balance on your account. Thus for inactive credit cards that I want to keep around for emergency use, I always leave a small positive balance on the card. The credit card company reserves the right to cancel my card at any time, but a positive balance would force them to send me a check for the privilege of doing so. A positive balance avoids making the account appear inactive and makes it cheaper for them to simply leave the account open.

negative: "In this answer, I won't elaborate on the possibilities of fraud (or pure human error), because something can always go wrong. I will, however, explain why I think you should always keep receipts. When the (monthly or so) time comes to pay your credit card bill, your credit card company sends you a list of transactions. That list has two primary purposes, both of which I would consider equally important: While for the former item, a receipt is not necessary (though it certainly does not hurt showing the receipt along with the bill to provide further proof that the payment was indeed connected to that bill), the latter point does require you to store the receipts so you can check, item-by-item, whether each of the sums is correct (and matched with a receipt at all). So, unless you can actually memorize all the credit card transactions you did throughout the past one or two months, the receipts are the most convenient way of keeping that information until the bill arrives. Yes, your credit card company probably has some safeguards in place to reveal fraud, which might kick in in time (the criteria are mostly heuristical, it seems, with credit cards or legitimate transactions here getting blocked every now and then simply because some travelling of the actual owner was misinterpreted as theft). However, it is your money, it is your responsibility to discover any issues with the bill, just as you would check the monthly transaction list from your bank account line by line. Ultimately, that is why you sign the vendor copy of the receipt when buying something offline; if you discover an issue in your list of transactions, you have to notify your credit card company that you dispute one of the charges, and then the charging vendor has to show that they have your signature for the respective transaction. So, to summarize: Do keep your receipts, use them to check the list of transactions before paying your credit card bill. EDIT: The receipt often cannot be replaced with the bill from the vendor. The bill is useful for seeing how the sum charged by the respective vendor was created, but in turn, such bills often do not contain any payment information, or (when payment was concluded before the bill was printed, as sometimes happens in pre-paid scenarios such as hotel booking) nondescript remarks such as ""- PAYMENT RECEIVED -"", without any further indication of which one of your credit cards, debit cards, bank accounts, stored value cards, or cash was used."

negative: "I'll assume United States as the country; the answer may (probably does) vary somewhat if this is not correct.  Also, I preface this with the caveat that I am neither a lawyer nor an accountant.  However, this is my understanding: You must recognize the revenue at the time the credits are purchased (when money changes hands), and charge sales tax on the full amount at that time.  This is because the customer has pre-paid and purchased a service (i.e. the ""credits"", which are units of time available in the application).  This is clearly a complete transaction.  The use of the credits is irrelevant.  This is equivalent to a customer purchasing a box of widgets for future delivery; the payment is made and the widgets are available but have simply not been shipped (and therefore used).  This mirrors many online service providers (say, NetFlix) in business model.   This is different from the case in which a customer purchases a ""gift card"" or ""reloadable debit card"".  In this case, sales tax is NOT collected (because this is technically not a purchase).  Revenue is also not booked at this time.  Instead, the revenue is booked when the gift card's balance is used to pay for a good or service, and at that time the tax is collected (usually from the funds on the card).  To do otherwise would greatly complicate the tax basis (suppose the gift card is used in a different state or county, where sales tax is charged differently?  Suppose the gift card is used to purchase a tax-exempt item?)  For justification, see bankruptcy consideration of the two cases.  In the former, the customer has ""ownership"" of an asset (the credits), which cannot be taken from him (although it might be unusable).  In the latter, the holder of the debit card is technically an unsecured creditor of the company - and is last in line if the company's assets are liquidated for repayment.   Consider also the case where the cost of the ""credits"" is increased part-way through the year (say, from $10 per credit to $20 per credit) or if a discount promotion is applied (buy 5 credits, get one free).  The customer has a ""tangible"" item (one credit) which gets the same functionality regardless of price.  This would be different if instead of ""credits"" you instead maintain an ""account"" where the user deposited $1000 and was billed for usage; in this case you fall back to the ""gift card"" scenario (but usage is charged at the current rate) and revenue is booked when the usage is purchased; similarly, tax is collected on the purchase of the service.  For this model to work, the ""credit"" would likely have to be refundable, and could not expire (see gift cards, above), and must be usable on a variety of ""services"".  You may have particular responsibility in the handling of this ""deposit"" as well."

negative: "The credit card may have advantages in at least two cases: In some instances (at least in the US), a merchant will put a ""hold"" on a credit card without charging it.  This happens a lot at hotels, for example, which use the hold as collateral against damages and incidental charges.  On a credit card this temporarily reduces your credit limit but never appears on your bill.  I've never tried to do it on a debit card, but my understanding is that they either reject the debit card for this purpose or they actually make the withdrawal and then issue a refund later.  You'll actually need to account for this in your cash flow on the debit card but not on the credit card. If you get a fraudulent charge on your credit card, it impacts that account until you detect it and go through the fraud resolution process.  On a debit card, the fraudulent charge may ripple through the rest of your life.  The rent payment that you made by electronic transfer or (in the US) by check, for example, is now rejected because your bank account is short by the amount of the fraud even if you didn't use the debit card to pay it.  Eventually this will probably get sorted out, but it has potential to create a bigger mess than is necessary. Personally, I never use my debit card. I consider it too risky with no apparent benefit."

negative: "It is called ""Credit card installments"" or ""Equal pay installments"", and I am not aware of them being widely used in the USA. While in other countries they are supported by banks directly (right?), in US you may find this option only in some big stores like home improvement stores, car dealerships, cell phone operators (so that you can buy a new phone) etc. Some stores allow 0% financing for, say, 12 months which is not exactly the same as installments but close, if you have discipline to pay $250 each month and not wait for 12 months to end. Splitting the big payment in parts means that the seller gets money in parts as well, and it adds risks of customer default, introduces debt collection possibility etc. That's why it's usually up to the merchants to support it - bank does not care in this case, from the bank point of view the store just charges the same card another $250 every month. In other countries banks support this option directly, I think, taking over or dividing the risk with the merchants. This has not happened in US. There is a company SplitIt which automates installments if stores want to support it but again, it means stores need to agree to it. Here is a simple article describing how credit cards work: https://www.usbank.com/credit-cards/how-credit-cards-work.html In general, if you move to US, you are unlikely to be able to get a regular credit card because you will not have any ""credit history"" which is a system designed to track each customer ability to get & pay off debt. The easiest way to build the history - request ""secured credit card"", which means you have to give the bank money up front and then they will give you a credit card with a credit limit equal to that amount. It's like a ""practice credit card"". You use it for 6-12 months and the bank will report your usage to credit bureaus, establishing your ""credit score"". After that you should be able to get your money back and convert your secured card into a regular credit card. Credit history can be also built by paying rent and utilities but that requires companies who collect money to report the payments to credit bureaus and very few do that. As anything else in US, there are some businesses which help to solve this problem for extra money."

negative: Agree with the comment, 760 is a good score. The average score is less than 700 and average score for your age group is even lower.  (Source: https://www.creditkarma.com/trends/age)   Just keep paying your credit card bills on time. You could also ask for increases in your credit limits on your existing credit cards, which may increase your score, but could decrease it in the short term depending on how your credit card company looks at your credit history in the process.  (Source: http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/2014/06/27/3-ways-to-increase-your-credit-card-spending-limit)

negative: A few reasons make sense: They have a defined process for rentals, risk assessment, and customer credit. Especially for a large corporation, making changes to that process is not trivial, adds risk/uncertainty, and will be costly. Such changes for a relatively small customer base might not makes sense. Many rental companies DO allow you to rent with a debit card. Why do some businesses take cash only?  With a debit card, there is no third party guarantee. With a credit card, the cash is coming from a well-established third party who will pay (assuming no disputes) and has a well-established history of paying. Even if the merchant holds your account, it is still your cash under the control of you and your bank until the deposit clears the merchants bank. It is not surprising they view that as more risk and potentially not worth hassling with debit.

negative: It may or may not be a good idea to borrow money from your family; there are many factors to consider here, not the least of which is what you would do if you got in serious financial trouble and couldn't make your scheduled payments on the loan. Would you arrange with them to sell the property ASAP? Or could they easily manage for a few months without your scheduled payments if it were necessary? A good rule of thumb that some people follow when lending to family is this: don't do it unless you're 100% OK with the possibility that they might not pay you back at all. That said, your question was about credit scores specifically. Having a mortgage and making on-time payments would factor into your score, but not significantly more heavily than having revolving credit (eg a credit card) and making on time payments, or having a car loan or installment loan and making on time payments. I bought my house in 2011, and after years of paying the mortgage on time my credit score hasn't changed at all. MyFico has a breakdown of factors affecting your credit score here: http://www.myfico.com/crediteducation/whatsinyourscore.aspx. The most significant are a history of on-time payments, low revolving credit utilization (carrying a $4900 balance on a card with a $5000 limit is bad, carrying a $10 balance on the same card is good), and overall length of your credit history. As to credit mix, they have this to say: Types of credit in use Credit mix determines 10% of my FICO Score The FICO® Score will consider your mix of credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, finance company accounts and mortgage loans. It's not necessary to have one of each, and it's not a good idea to open credit accounts you don’t intend to use. The credit mix usually won’t be a key factor in determining your FICO Score—but it will be more important if your credit report does not have a lot of other information on which to base a score. Have credit cards – but manage them responsibly Having credit cards and installment loans with a good payment history will raise your FICO Score. People with no credit cards tend to be viewed as a higher risk than people who have managed credit cards responsibly.

negative: "You should probably call the travel agency and complain. Not that they will care, but if by any chance they do - they can ask PayPal to remove the block. This is what is called ""authorization pending"". Usually, a credit card transaction has two stages: The merchant requests its payment processor to authorize the transaction. The processor will contact the card issuer with the transaction details and will get the authorization code which will be passed to the merchant. At that stage the transaction enters the ""pending"" stage on your account. The merchant submits the transaction and gets the money from its payment processor, who forwards the transaction to the card issuer and gets the money from there. The card issuer charges the card owner. The transaction should have the same authorization code received in step #1, and by matching it to the pending transaction, the card issuer removes the pending transaction, and posts the actual transaction. However, if the transaction in step #2 doesn't include the code from step #1, the match doesn't occur and you see the situation you have now: both the actual transaction and the pending are active. In this case the merchant should contact its merchant processor and request the revocation of the authorization code. The processor will then forward the request to the card issuer, who will then remove the pending transaction. As you can see - multiple parties have to actually care for that to happen, and many times they don't, because they don't have to. As to the period - it's up to the card issuer (PayPal in your case), but 1 month is a very long time. Usually it's about a week or two, unless it's a hotel/car rental. In any case - once it expires, it will go away on its own and if you don't mind for the amounts to be blocked until then - just let it expire. The fact that you used a debit card for this transaction is irrelevant. Unless it was a pin transaction, debit card transactions are processed as credit card transactions by processors. For pin transactions, there process is different and you shouldn't see doubles. If it was a pin transaction - contact PayPal and check with them what's going on. Generally, PayPal is not to be used as a ""bank account"", it is merely a payment processor, and it is advised to remove the money from there as soon as possible."

negative: "> But I explicitly mentioned the customer experience, which is completely different and no matter how much you want your industry experience to matter for that, it doesn't affect it.  You mentioned the customer experience randomly in some parts, then threw in Wikileaks in others. If we're talking about the customer experience, we need to drop the payment processors aspect, because the majority of the time, the consumer doesn't even know who processes their card payments let alone care, and again, PayPal is not even close to the only option. If this were 1998 and people were really wary of buying online, then it would be a bigger deal to be banned from PayPal. But it's not 1998, and a ton of people don't care, and there are all kinds of alternatives.  PayPal can deny service all it wants (and it does that on a regular basis) and that in no way means that a business can't accept cards. You're ""customer experience"" premise is flawed. I literally spend all day helping businesses set up credit card processing, and PayPal is a drop in the bucket.   >Could you clarify for me how VISA/MasterCard managed to block a merchant, who presumably wasn't a direct customer (but instead a payment processor customer), but cannot block a card holder? (yes, this is an honest question)  Visa and Mastercard have relationships with banks and/or processors, who have relationships with merchants. Visa and MC's agreements with banks and processors stipulate that those banks and processors can't offer services to companies engaging in illegal activity. Wikileaks was (allegedly) engaging in illegal activity, and it's on that basis that Visa and MC denied service to WL.  Visa and Mastercard have almost nothing to do with cardholders. They don't issue credit cards to cardholders, they aren't the ones that do credit checks to determine creditworthiness, they aren't the ones helping you with your monthly statement or a dispute, etc. Cardholders aren't Visa and MC's clients. When a transaction is run, it's authenticated by the bank that issued the card, not by Visa or MC, and it's the bank, not Visa or MC, that would block transactions or freeze a cardholder account.   >The WikiLeaks blockade was clearly political. What makes you say otherwise? And this is political.  So your argument is that anything political is the same as anything else political? Kind of a stretch..  Wikileaks was denied service by the card brands for allegedly engaging in illegal activity. PayPal is denying service of its own volition, which FYI, it does every day to legal businesses. As long as their reasons for doing so aren't discriminatory based on status in a protected class, they are (and should be) allowed to refuse service."

negative: If it's just an ordinary credit card I'd think he could merely dispute the charges, since he's saying they 'created' (which I presume means applied for and received) a card, it should not affect his accounts directly.  And especially since application details may be bogus, he should be able to prove it was not him. Even if they got HIS credit card number, he should be able to dispute those charges that are not his, especially if they went to a different address, or were charged someplace (like another city) where he was not present at that time. OTOH, if they created a DEBIT card that was linked to his bank account somehow, well then, that could be a lot more difficult to recover from, but even then, if it's not his signature that was used to apply for the card, or on any charges that had to be signed for etc, he should be able to dispute it and get the bank to put the money back in his account since it will be a case of forgery etc. The big problem with ID theft is people tend to ruin your credit rating, and you end up having to fend off bill collectors etc. The primary thing it costs you (speaking from experience of having checks stolen and forged using a fake drivers license) is the TIME and hassle of getting everything straightened out and put right.  In my case it took a few hours at the credit union, and all the money was back, in a new account (the old one having been closed) when I left.  Dealing with all the poor merchants that were taken, and with bill collectors on the other hand took months.  but I never once in the process needed 'quick money' from anyone. So the need for 'quick money' seems a bit doubtful.  I'd want a lot more details of exactly why he needs money from you. Refer your friend to this Federal Trade Commission site and make sure he takes the steps listed, and especially pays attention to the parts about keeping notes of every single person he talks with, including name, date, time, and pertinent details of the conversation.  If he has some idea HOW this happened (as in a robbery) then report it to the proper authorities, and insist on getting a case number. talking with bill collectors is the worst, just trying to get ahold of them when they send you letters (and talk to a person, not a recorded number with instructions on how to pay them) is sometimes nearly impossible (google was my friend)  and a lot of times they didn't want to back off till I gave them the case number with the police, that somehow magically made it 'real' to them and not just my telling them a story.

negative: There are numerous reasons that go beyond the immediate requirement for access to credit.  Many people just plain don't like carrying cash. Before electronic debit cards became mainstream about the only way to pay for online services was with a credit card.  This has now changed just about everywhere except a large number of airlines which still only sell online tickets via a credit card payment. And then there are all those countries where governments (and some banks) have decided to charge merchants more when customers use debit cards.  If you don't like carrying cash then you may find that the only card you can use is a credit card. These concerns are gradually disappearing and at some stage someone is likely to offer a combined debit-credit card. At which point you'll probably get credit whether you like it or not.

negative: Carrying a small balance is generally better for your credit score that paying off in full every month by virtue of the statistics and models that give you a credit score for a certain product. Banks don't want to lend to customers that aren't going to be profitable, in my experience customers who can show that they have credit over time are generally awarded a higher score. So my advice would be to keep a small, manageable balance on the credit card, paying off the balance and then spending a little again on the card to keep at roughly constant balance. This revolving credit is the purpose of the product, and by showing you can use it sensibly, you will be rewarded over time. Source: I build credit scoring models for a big UK lender, specialising in credit cards and personal loan modelling.

negative: "I think you misunderstand the purpose of the liability account.  I would suggest you review the standard accounting model, but to give you a brief overview: Income and expenses are money coming into and out of your possession.  They are the pipes flowing into and out of your ""box"".  Inside your box, you have assets (bank, savings, cash, etc) and liabilities (credit cards, unpaid debts, etc).  Money can flow into and out of either asset or liability accounts, for example: deposit a payment (income to asset), buy office supplies with cash (asset to expense), pay a bill with credit card (liability to expense), customer pays one of your debts directly (income to liability).  Paying off a debt with an asset does not affect your overall net worth, so paying a check to your credit card bill (asset to liability) doesn't decrease your total balance, it merely moves the value from one bucket to another. Now to your question: Mandatory payments, such as taxes or insurance (or for that matter, utilities, rent, food- all things that ""must"" be bought occasionally) are not liabilities, instead they are all expenses.  They might be paid FROM a liability account, if they are paid on credit for example, but the money still flows from liability to expense.  In my own records I have Expense:Taxes and Expense:Insurance, with sub-accounts in each.  Where the money comes from depends entirely on how I pay my bills, whether from cash or banks (asset) or whether it's a charge (liability).  Sometimes you receive payments back from an insurance company.  I find that rather than treating insurance premiums as a positive balance in a liability (with eventual payments as debits to the liability account), it is better to treat any payment from the insurance as income. Hope that helps!"

negative: "I love this part:  >...and that theft is being combined with consumer fraud…Consumers are purchasing these goods, they’re sending their credit card information to these anonymous offshore companies, and they’re receiving defective goods.  They try to turn it around to make it sound like they're on our side. ""We're fighting *for* you! We're trying to protect you from the bad guys!"""

negative: Because your friend isn't going to like the ~2% charge they have to pay to the credit card company on the $10,000 purchase. Credit card companies make money off of transactions. The cardholder normally doesn't pay any transaction fees (and in fact can make a profit via rewards), but the merchant has to pay a certain amount of money to the credit card company for the transaction. In this case, the apartment owners ate the charge, likely because it was easier for them to send a check than to refund the cost of the fee through the credit card company. If you started doing this a lot to take advantage of this, I would imagine they would get smart and refuse your business (it'll be pretty obvious what you're doing if you're not signing any leases).

negative: My experience is in the United States only. In the past, American Express marketed its products as more exclusive and prestigious than other cards.  There was an attempt to give the impression that cardholders were more qualified financially.  In return, fees were higher both to merchants and to cardholders.  At the time (early 1990's), it was not common to use credit cards for small purchases, such as groceries or fast food.  Credit cards were used for larger purchases such as jewelry or electronics or dinner in a nicer restaurant. Once it became popular to use credit cards for everyday purchases, the demand for customers using credit cards changed to the highest number of people instead of people of higher status.  At that point, Visa (and to a lesser extent Mastercard) transaction volume increased dramatically.  Merchants needed the largest number of customers with cards, not the most financially stable.  As Visa volume grew, and people started using Visa for small purchases, the use of American Express decreased as their habits changed (once someone got used to pulling out Visa, they did it in every situation).  Merchants are less willing to go through the extra hassle of accepting cards that are used by fewer people.  Over time, I suspect this process led to the gap between Visa and American Express. As a merchant, in order to accept credit cards, you have to set up a bank account and maintain a merchant account.  Accepting Visa, MC and Discover can all be done through one account, but American Express has traditionally required a separate relationship, as well as its own set of rules and fees that were generally higher.  Since there are relatively few American Express cardholders compared to Visa, there is doubt about whether it is worth it accept the card.  It depends upon the customer base.  Fine restaurants still generally accept American Express.

negative: A retail revolving account is a more formal name for a general credit card.   A revolving account is an account created by a lender to represent debts where the outstanding balance does not have to be paid in full every month by the borrower to the lender. The borrower may be required to make a minimum payment, based on the balance amount. Retail Revolving Account Wikipedia This is different from something like a car loan or mortgage or other more structured or secured debt.   It used to be somewhat common for very large retailers to issue lines of credit to their customers in the form of a store card.  This card was a lot like a credit card but only accepted at the specific retailer.  These kinds of cards are all but extincted.  Now major retailers will simply co-brand a credit card with a major bank, the differentiation being preferred rewards when used at the retailer.

negative: I've kind of been there myself.  I stretched my finances for the deposit on a house, and lived off my credit card for a few months to build up what I was short on the deposit.  Add some unexpected car repairs, and I ended up with £10k on the card.  The problem I had then was that interest on the card ran at around 20%, and although I could meet the interest payments I couldn't clear the £10k. I simply went and talked to my bank.  In the UK there are some clear rules about banks giving customers a chance to restructure their debts.  That's the BANK doing it, not some shady loan-shark.  We went through my finances and established that in principle it was repayable.  So I got a 2-year unsecured loan at around 5%, cleared the card, and spent the next 2 years paying off a loan that I could afford.  My credit score is still aces. Forget the loan-sharks.  Talk to your bank.  If they're crap, talk to another bank.  If no bank is going to help you, consider bankrupcy as per advice above.  Debt restructuring companies are ALWAYS a con, no exceptions.

negative: "I have some experience with this.  I have had fraudulent charges appear on my credit card statement and had to change my card number several times, despite (I believe) no carelessness on my part.  Every time that this has happened, I have never lost a penny due to fraud on my credit card.  The bank has ultimately removed the fraudulent charges in every instance. Given this, you'd think the consumer doesn't need to worry about this at all.  But it seems like credit card companies beg to differ. Yes, because although I have never lost a penny to fraud, the bank (or the merchant) loses money every time it happens.  The $0 liability protects you; the card security measures protect the bank. But... why should a consumer ever bother worrying about these in the first place, when he knows he legally can't be held responsible for fraudulent charges? What exactly is this new ""peace of mind"" that he supposedly gets by (say) using features like virtual account numbers that he doesn't already have? Although you shouldn't end up out any money when this happens, it is an inconvenience.  The bank will cancel your card and issue you a new number.  It may take a few days for you to receive your new card.  If you have another card to use, this isn't a big deal.  If you are out of state the day before you need to check out of a hotel and return a rental car with no backup credit card (as I have been), it is a big deal.  (In my case, I had to have the credit card company talk to the hotel to give them the new card number, and they were able to overnight me a new credit card so I could get home.  I now make sure I carry a backup credit card.) Should a consumer put any effort into worrying about this at all? (Why?) In my opinion, it makes sense to be careful what you do with your credit card number, if only to avoid the inconvenience.  Don't type your credit card number into an e-mail message, for example, and only use it on websites that you trust.  That having been said, it is not worth it to be paranoid about it, either.  No matter how careful you are, eventually you will probably use it at a store that gets hacked, or your card will get skimmed somewhere, and you'll need to get a new credit card number. The best way to protect yourself is to make sure that you go over your credit card statement each month and look for any fraudulent charges that the bank didn't catch."

negative: "The biggest (but still temporary) ding you'll see on your credit score from opening a new account is from the low average (and low minimum) account age.  This will have a stronger effect than the hard pull of the credit report, which is still a factor (but not much of one if you only have 1-2 pulls in the past couple years).   Having a lower average account age increases your risk to lenders.  Your average will go up by one month per month, and each time you open an account it will suffer a drop proportional to the number of accounts you already had open before.  So if you want to have a more ""solid"" credit score that stays strong in the face of new accounts in the future, it's better to open a few more accounts now (assuming you can ride out the temporary drop in score and aren't planning to go e.g. mortgage-shopping in the very near future).   Having an additional line of credit will also likely cause your credit card utilization (total balance / total credit limit, expressed as a percentage) to decrease, which would tend to increase your credit score, counteracting the age factor, unless your utilization is already extremely low (which it probably is given your monthly account payoffs).  There are various credit score simulators out there, from places that show you your credit score, and you can put in a hypothetical new card account to see the immediate likely impact for your particular situation.   You identified other costs, such as risk of fraud and fees.  You should check your statements once in a while even if you're not using the card, just to make sure no one else is.  The bit of additional time required for this is a nonzero cost of having an open credit card account.  So is the additional hassle of dealing with having the card stolen etc. if you carry it in your wallet and your wallet's stolen. If you have an account with zero activity for some number of years, the bank may close it automatically and that can reflect negatively on a credit report (as a bank closure of the account, the reason is often obscured).  Check your terms and conditions and/or have some activity every so often to prevent this from happening.   Some of the otherwise most attractive credit cards have monthly or annual fees, which will cost you, and you won't want to close those because it would then reduce your credit score (e.g. by reducing the total available credit and increasing your utilization percentage) - so the solution is don't apply for credit cards that have monthly/annual fees.  There are plenty of good cards without those fees. With a credit score that high, you can get cards that have some very good benefits and rewards programs, as well as some with great introductory offers.  Though I'm not familiar with details of Amazon's offer, $80 cash up-front with nothing else seems unlikely to be among your best options.  I would think that for at least some of the fee-free cards available to you, the benefits exceed the costs, and you could ""cash in"" some of the benefits of your good credit record to get those benefits (i.e. this is one of those things you work hard to build good credit for), while also building your long-term reputation for repayment reliability.   Also be aware as you shop around for cards that credit card companies pay fairly high referral fees to websites that send customers their way, so if you want you can think about who you're supporting when you click the link that takes you to an application you complete, and choose to support a site you think is providing a useful consumer-focused service.   As factors affecting your credit score in addition to payment history (i.e. making regular payments as agreed on the new account will help you), Equifax lists:"

negative: I'm sure it depends on the company, but I routinely run balances greater than 0 on my credit card. The reason is simple: I already budgeted to spend the money, I know I'm going to spend the money, and it's easier to put the extra money on the card at the beginning of my budget period rather than waiting until I spend the money and get a bill. There are 2 relevant numbers: First is the balance on your bill. It can show a positive or negative value, as people have talked about. The balance on my card tends to update fairly infrequently. The second is the available credit. When I overpay on my card, the available credit does not show more than the available debt. The latter value, however, updates for me immediately -- I can see within minutes any transaction on my credit card based on the credit available. One important caveat: Refunds don't always immediately process. You may have to wait days or weeks until that money shows up in your account. Spending the money before it appears in your account will cause your card to behave exactly as if you don't have the money.

negative: "I've been using YNAB4 for the last few years, and I like it so much that I haven't switched to the web version (new YNAB) yet.  However, I have played around with the web version a little, and here is what I have discovered. Despite the different look of the credit card account and the lengthy dissertation on the credit card differences in the Transition Guide, credit cards are handled almost exactly the same in the new YNAB as they were in YNAB4. You enter credit card spending transactions in the same way as YNAB4.  When you enter a transaction, money is pulled out of the budget category you select.  The only difference is that in YNAB4, this money was considered ""gone.""  Now, that money moves from your budget category into the new credit card category. When it comes time to pay the credit card bill, you also enter this transaction in the same way as before.  It is entered as a transfer of money from your checking account to your credit card account.  The only difference here is that with new YNAB, the funds are deducted from your credit card category.  This is handled automatically, so you don't have to think about it if you don't want to.   If you always pay your credit card bill in full, you never have to budget money manually into the credit card category.  The money will already be there from when you entered the credit card spending transactions.  The only time you would manually budget money into the credit card spending category is if you have old credit card debt that you are trying to pay off. A quick example, in pictures: I start out with $10,000 in my checking account, and no credit card debt:  I've got all $10,000 in my ""Fun Money"" category:  Now, I spend $100 at the Store:  You can see that, just like in YNAB4, the credit card account is now in the red $100, and the checking account balance has not changed. In the categories, my Fun Money category is down $100 to $9,900, just like it would be in YNAB4.  The only difference is that there is now $100 in the new Credit Card Payments category.  When it is time to pay the bill, I enter an account transfer, just like in YNAB4:  Note that the Credit Card balance is back to $0, and the Checking Account balance is now down to $9,900. The Credit Card Payment budget category is now magically back to $0:  The above example starts with a zero balance on the credit card.  However, most people will have a non-zero balance on their credit card when they first start a budget.  In YNAB4, when you added a credit card with a (negative) balance, the debt was shown in a budget category called ""Pre-YNAB Debt.""  You then added money to this budget category until it went to zero, and then you didn't need this budget category anymore. With new YNAB, credit card balances are not shown in budget categories.  If you add a credit card account with a balance, the debt is not shown in the budget categories.  To pay off this debt, you can fund the Credit Card Payments category.  After this existing balance amount is paid off, you won't need to fund the Credit Card Payments category anymore as long as you properly assign each new credit card purchase to a funded budget category."

negative: It's very, very unlikely that you received a phone call at work with an incorrect birth date from an actual lending company that thinks it loaned you any money.  It's much more likely that you received a phone call at work from a collections agency that would have bought some loan from the aforementioned agency for pennies on the dollar.  They would have been hunting around trying to find someone with your name who was born thirteen years earlier.  It's even more likely that this is some sort of phishing scam.  If you're worried, you can check your credit rating, but it is likely that you can safely ignore the situation.  If they call back, ask for thorough details about the credit card.  If they're a real collections agency and for some reason they won't leave you alone, IIRC the most surefire course of action is to hire a lawyer to send them a cease-and-desist letter.


query: Due Diligence - Dilution?

positive: Publicly traded companies perform dilution via an FPO (Follow-up Public Offer). It is a process similar to IPO, with announcements, prospectus, etc. You will know ahead of time when that happen. Stocks traded OTC are not required to file a lot of regulatory documents that publicly traded stocks are required to file, and may not disclose dilutions or additional issues. By buying OTC you agree to these terms. You will probably get a notice and a chance to vote on that in your proxy statement, but that happens when you already own the stock.

positive: Your best bet is to just look at comparative balance sheets or contact the company itself. Otherwise, you will need access to a service like PrivCo to get data.

positive: "You will have to check SEC forms to know this in full. A publicly-traded company will have an amount of publicly tradable shares which can be easily found on their financial reports. But. that is not the only type of equity-like financial instrument that such a company can issue. A previous reply mentions ""follow-on"" public offering. However, a company may initiate a private equity offering without disclosing ahead of time, sometimes with warrants, or long-lasting options to purchase (new) stock."

negative: No.  You don't need to pay the IRS before such a transfer – though you'll need to fill out certain paperwork to report the money transfer to authorities if it exceeds a threshold amount.  If the money is income, you'll need to declare it on your income tax return and then pay the taxes due.  If it is a gift, other rules apply and tax may be due.  Do proper due diligence and consult with a trusted tax professional. However:   Please see the comments above – this sounds like a potential scam.

negative: What I did not understand when I first called is that margin able account means the ability to borrow margin, but not the necessity of borrowing. Like I was saying, it is something I am going to do a lot of due diligence on before I plunge in. I have a general vague idea of futures, and thus why I was asking for info on the matter.

negative: He did not go into specifics but he said that a usual case would probably be around $10 to $20 million. And that they make the deal in a matter of days. The deal usually closes after extensive due diligence between them and another law firm.

negative: This is an extremely simplified version and not necessarily accurate. C for example has $800b in cash and 10+% Tier 1 capital relative to other banks. Yes, they need to write down debt but the larger concern as opposed to bankruptcy by capital markets is equity dilution.   Both C and BAC need to raise equity capital due and, due to new leverage restrictions, will dilute existing shareholders so much that they will have difficulty matching previous EPS. Also, a lot of analysts expect thy aren't marking down assets enough (reducing that large Tier 1 buffer pretty heavily).   One of the primary reasons they issue smaller dividends relative to JPM is that dividends for systematically important institutions must be approved by the Fed now (Dodd-Frank). They can't issue a big dividend because the Fed says they aren't well capitalized enough.   To say they are bankrupt though shows a misunderstanding of bank balance sheets and how the FRB discount window works, though.

negative: im not hating whats so ever man. I'm saying exactly what golfman is saying and that is to do your due diligence. Answer me this question so i know you have some kind of info on this business. What is their profit margin and overhead costs?

negative: Well, if they were lemons, the value is significantly less than what GS sold them to the government for. What is more sad is that Fannie and Freddie are going to get made whole and we are going to pretend like their incompetence and lack of due diligence never happened.   Back to business as usual, until the next time the hacks at these government agencies get burned.

negative: You can trade an index by using a Contract For Difference, or CFD. Various brokers offer this method and the spreads are quite low. They tend to widen outside of market hours, and not all brokers offer the same spreads. I would look for a broker that offers the lowest spread on the index you are interested in. You should also do your due diligence and check they are regulated by the relevant authority  pertaining to their territory, eg FSA for uk

negative: I think that's a bad way to look at it. What if the price of that asset never fails below that value again? Do you just never buy?  I think a better way to operate is to do your due diligence, and if the asset you're looking at holds value for you at its current price, then jump in. Otherwise - look somewhere else.

negative: "So very true, and I've heard most of these used in the way they describe. Although, they're missing ""We need to get some headlights on this"" = ""We just got surprised by our lack of common sense. Let's not let that happen again!""  I think that one's low hanging fruit, and our best practices dictate that we capitalize on that because of the easy ROI. It's just due diligence, really."

negative: You are obligated to return it, and they will come after you as soon as they figure out the error. You probably need to notify somebody as soon as possible and keep records of your correspondence showing you performed due diligence in returning the funds.  Transferring the money into an account at the same institution is also wise.  You can't look like you are hiding it, but keeping it mixed with your actual funds is also asking for extra trouble or work.

negative: So nothing preventing false ratings besides additional scrutiny from the market/investors, but there are some newer controls in place to prevent institutions from using them. Under the DFA banks can no longer solely rely on credit ratings as due diligence to buy a financial instrument, so that's a plus. The intent being that if financial institutions do their own leg work then *maybe* they'll figure out that a certain CDO is garbage or not.  Edit: lead in

negative: "This is definitely a scam. My husband was inquiring with a ""company"" that was offering him to be. Representative for them. He got the same job details but the company was called Ceneo. I did due diligence and found that the real Ceneo has no problems receiving money directly from buyers around the world. The fake company mirrored their website, posted jobs on the net,hoping to ""employ"" unsuspecting people in the U.S. This is their reply to my husband when he asked the job details. DO NOT GET SCAMMED and held accountable for money laundering."

negative: I think the OP took responsibility for their mistakes by walking away from their mortgage and living life with in their means. If it screws the bank, so be it, because the bank failed in its responsibility to do due diligence, whether that means figuring out if their mortgagee can pay over the life of the loan and/or if the housing market is a bubble.   And the houses were paid for by the banks. The house is the collateral for the loan the bank made. The banks distorted the market with their easy money, and now they have to pay the consequences.

negative: The only issue I have is with 4).  *Caveat emptor* always applies, and even if you accept the notion that S&P was *criminally* misrepresenting bond quality, Fannie/Freddie still must do their own due diligence, and so I don't think they are off the hook here.  At worst, the execs running Fannie/Freddie are also guilty of criminal collusion; at best, they are guilty of massive incompetence.

negative: "Not having seen the movie, I don't know what you mean by ""fraudulent options buys."" But there are two possibilities: 1) Someone placed buy orders on the account without authorization. In which case it comes down to a protracted lawsuit to determine whether the broker exercised due diligence, or whether Bruce foolishly gave someone his password. 2) The options themselves were fraudulent. In which case the OCC is responsible for making everyone whole."

negative: I think following the professional money managers is a strategy worth considering. The buys from your favorite investors can be taken as strong signals. But you should never buy any stock blindly just because someone else bought it. Be sure do your due diligence before the purchase. The most important question is not what they bought, but why they bought it and how much. To add/comment on Freiheit's points:

negative: A large biller is registered and can initiate an ACH Debit to your account based on the Account Number and the Routing number. He assumes responsibility and completes the due diligence of obtaining a written mandate / permission / authorization from you. There are other legal process where by you get a Power of Attorney that would allow you to transact on behalf of someone. The key point you seem to be missing is that one can ONLY transact from ones account either by walking into the Bank / ATM, or by writing a check. There are other options as well to transact.

negative: You can calculate the fully diluted shares by comparing EPS vs diluted (adjusted) EPS as reported in 10K. I don't believe they report the number directly, but it is a trivial math exercise to reach it. The do report outstanding common stock (basis for EPS).

negative: ">Most small business lawsuits are a result of either gross negligence on the business owners part (which would be justified) or terrible or misleading service (again justified). If you're going to do honest business, take responsibility for the work done, and do your due diligence to manage what goes on in your four walls, you'll be fine.   Either that or they are over very ""silly"" things that general liability insurance will handle -- stuff like slips/falls in front of your retail storefront, etc."

negative: So I actually just messaged him like why do you need a copy of my college diploma and he said his lawyer said he needs a copy of the diplomas of the people he specifically supervises on an Italian client (we work in PR and have companies and sometimes government subsidized companies as clients)... so maybe it does check out? I mean I did my due diligence I'm not sure what else I can do. If he photoshops it, that's on him.

negative: "As Yishani points out, you always have to do due diligence in buying a house. As I mentioned in this earlier post  I'd highly recommend reading this   book on buying a house associated   with the Wall Street Journal - it   clearly describes the benefits and   challenges of owning a house. One key   takeaway I had was - on average houses   have a ""rate of return"" on par with   treasury bills. Its best to buy a house if you want to live in a house, not as thinking about it as a ""great investment"". And its certainly worth the 4-6 hours it takes to read the book cover to cover."

negative: Annualize quarterly returns:      AR = (1+QR)^4  Where *QR* is a decimal return, e.g. 0.05.  Standard deviations are similar:      Annual SD = SD * sqrt(T)  If you have quarterly deviations, *T=4*, if you have daily, *T=252*, etc.  As an aside, for work with money riding on it, it is *not* okay to aggregate standard deviations if there's autocorrelation amongst observations at a smaller time scale. Volatility is often quoted this way and that's fine, but it is dangerous to do any sort of risk management with this and you'll require more due diligence. It's a good enough approximation for napkin math, though.

negative: "A ""covenant"" is a solemn promise to engage in or refrain from a specified action. Every company must do a balancing act while declaring the dividends in terms of companies interest (can it use the surplus cash to generate more revenue) to shareholders' interests, giving back to them the profits that due. Many countries have regulations governing as to when and how much the dividends may be given. It also lays out the policy about declaring dividends to protect everyones' interest. For example if the company has a huge suit pending against it, the company is not supposed to distribute the surplus cash as dividends and when the suit goes against it, its left when no money to pay ... or other such examples where the interests of one or the other party is compromised. The company law board ensures that all this is adhered to in a fair manner. So essentially ""these covenants include provisions about passing dividends"", means that due diligence has be exercised by the company in order to arrive at the dividends that are to be paid out."

negative: i work at a bank. if a private company that we've never heard of wants a loan, we will be more hesitant than if it were a public, household name covered by equity research analysts. requires more due diligence on our part. if they get s&p or moody's ratings, that makes us more comfortable. the company wants the loan more than we want to lend to them, so in my mind, they should be the one paying for it.  i agree that this creates a conflict of interest, and recognize that conflict when using the research.

negative: Like others have already said, it may cause an immediate dip due to a large and sudden move in shares for that particular stock. However, if there is nothing else affecting the company's financials and investors perceive no other risks, it will probably bounce back a bit, but not back to the full value before the shares were issued. Why? Whenever a company issues more stock, the new shares dilute the value of the current shares outstanding, simply because there are now more shares of that stock trading on the market; the Earnings Per Share (EPS) Ratio will drop since the same profit and company value has to be spread across more shares. Example:  If a company is valued at $100 dollars and they have 25 shares outstanding, then the EPS ratio equates to $4 per share (100/25 = 4).  If the company then issues more shares (stock to employees who sell or keep them), let's say 25 more shares, then shares outstanding increase to 50, but the company's value still remains at $100 dollars. EPS now equates to $2 per share (100/50 = 2). Now, sometimes when shareholders (especially employees...and especially employees who just received them) suddenly all sell their shares, this causes a micro-panic in the market because investors believe the employees know something bad about the company that they don't. Other common shareholders then want to dump their holdings for fear of impending collapse in the company. This could cause the share price to dip a bit below the new diluted value, but again if no real, immediate risks exist, the price should go back up to the new, diluted value. Example 2: If EPS was at $4 before issuing more stock, and then dropped to $2 after issuing new stock, the micro-panic may cause the EPS to drop below $2 and then soon rebound back to $2 or more when investors realize no actual risk exists. After the dilution phase plays out, the EPS could actually even go above the pre-issuing value of $4 because investors may believe that since more stock was issued due to good profits, more profits may ensue. Hope that helps!

negative: Well, that is why I am asking questions, and seeing if there is any catch. I want to read up before I actually trade. Before I trades stocks I read for like 2 years, learning as much as I could. I am not about to jump in, but it is something I would like to trade eventually. I know I need to do my due diligence on it. The reason I came here was to get information on the topic before I decided on anything, including books and websites.

negative: As other answers have pointed out, professional real estate investors do own residential investment properties. However, small residential units typically are not owned by professional real estate investors as your experience confirms. This has a fairly natural cause. The size of the investment opportunity is insufficient to warrant the proper research/due diligence to which a large investment firm would have to commit if it wanted to properly assess the potential of a property. For a small real estate fund managing, say, $50 MM, it would take 100 properties at a $500K valuation in order to fully invest the funds. This number grows quickly as we decrease the average valuation to reflect even smaller individual units. Analogously, it is unlikely that you will find large institutional investors buying stocks with market caps of $20 MM. They simply cannot invest a large enough portion of total AUM to make the diligence make economic sense.  As such, institutional real estate money tends to find its way into large multi-family units that provide a more convenient purchase size for a fund.

negative: Just browsed their website. Not a single name of anybody involved. Their application process isn't safe(No https usage while transferring private information).  And considering they contacted you rather than you contacting them, I will be very wary about how they got my details. And they are located in Indonesia. And a simple google takes me to a BOILER SCAM thread. So all in all you have been scammed. Try asking for your money back, but may not be that helpful. Next time before giving your money to somebody, do some due diligence. These type of scams aren't new and are very common.

negative: Equity can be diluted by future investors, royalties get paid on each sale, companies can continue selling things even when operating at negative profit, back royalties due can be negotiated and at least partially paid in a bankruptcy.  From the standpoint of the investor: If it doesn't look like the company will likely have commercial success with a second product, it may be wise to simply take a portion of the product that is actually selling rather than risk your capital on the company's future successes (or failures). From the standpoint of the business owner/entreprenuer, if you believe you have a second product close to the end of the development pipeline it would be wise not to give up equity in the entire enterprise simply to gain required financing to ramp up production and marketing on an existing product.  Paying a royalty may be advantageous compared to paying interest on a loan as well (royalty payments are contingent on the occurrence of a sale while interest is due regardless).

negative: For stocks, I would not see these as profiting at the expense of another individual.  When you purchase/trade stocks, you are exchanging items of equal market value at the time of the trade. Both parties are getting a fair exchange when the transaction happens. If you buy a house, the seller has not profited at your expense. You have exchanged goods at market prices. If your house plummets in value and you lose $100k, it is not the sellers fault that you made the decision to purchase. The price was fair when you exchanged the goods. Future prices are speculative, so both parties must perform due diligence to make sure the exchange aligns with their interests.  Obviously, this is barring any sort of dishonesty or insider information on the part of either buyer or seller.

negative: The banks and the Fed inflated the housing bubble. There was too much money floating around and it went into housing and loans for housing. The banks are highly responsible for this crisis because the failed to investigation into who was receiving the loans (due diligence). In turn, many of these same banks sold these crap and uninvestigated loans as CDOs and the like (made triple A by the ratings agencies, paid by the banks) to other investors, bringing in more cash that was quickly loaned out to keep the whole process going. All the while they were filing and registering these mortgage records with MERS to avoid paying various jurisdictions the fees and taxes owed (this is many 10s of billions of dollars). The easy money created artificial and inflated demand and completely distorted the housing market.   Other than those large points, the banks are utterly blameless.

negative: >You could even pull a cash figure from the income projection in the business plan you asked to see. You did ask for that, right? As well as the resumes from the founders and the name of the VC company so that you can check them out?  I guess this is my point - a fresh grad is unlikely to know how to evaluate this stuff, assuming they even know to ask for the things you mention. They also will be less likely to be in a position to be making a lot of demands of that nature. You act as if it's straightforward, when I don't think it is. OP was making the point that, as you rightly point out, you need to do a lot of due diligence and decide if it's the right thing, whereas in the popular culture there is a lot of glossing over of the failure cases, making people less likely to know that they need to be careful.