Assume that you are in a situation that you have no enough cash to pay the bill for your purchase. At this time, you don’t have enough balance on your debit card too. In this situation, you can use your credit cards to pay the bills.
This is the key feature of credit cards. Credit cards are a rectangular piece of card that allows you to pay the amount without pre-depositing the amount in your account. All the Banks in India offers you Credit card. Not only in the banking sectors some other companies like Paytm and Walmart also offer you a credit card.
1. What is a credit card?
A credit card is nothing but a card that is issued from a financial firm or institution, usually a bank. They are providing help to the cardholders to borrow funds from that particular institution, under certain terms and conditions. The Cardholders are expected to pay the money back with interest to the firm.
2. What are the features of credit cards?
There are several features of credit cards. They are
- The credit card allows you to pay the bills within the Line Of Credits (LOC). LOC is a borrowing limit for credit cardholders. Customers can use a credit card up to this limit.
- You can also earn through credit cards. Special rewards have been provided for the specific credit company.
- They allow you to pay both domestic and international payments.
- Credit cards keep tracking of all your payment records done using the card.
- They should provide a grace period to repay the amount that you had to spend using the card.
3. What is the eligibility to own a credit card?
You can’t afford a credit card without qualifying for these eligibilities. They are
3.1 Age requirement
Generally, all the banks will provide credit cards to those who have the age of 21 or above. age requirements vary according to the different banks.
3.2 Income requirement
Bank would check your income requirement before offering the credit card. You should possess a minimum income of Rs 20,000. This too varies with the credit card company. The income requirement is to verify whether you are eligible to repay the spent amount.
3.3 Income tax requirement
The income Tax requirement is a form for the taxpayers who register their income regularly and pay their tax applicable to the Income Tax Departments. This must be verified by the banks before offering credit cards.
Higher the number of filing the Income Tax requirements higher will be the chance of issuing the credit cards.
3.4 Credit score
For example, if you are taking a car loan and you are repaying the installment within the maturity period your credit card score increases. In another scenario if you have a another credit card and you are paying the credit bills within the specified date also increases the credit score.
Cred, IndiaLends, CIBIL Score, and CreditMantri are some of the apps used to calculate your credit score. Several online websites and apps are available for calculating the credit score
Credit card companies posses the above mentioned eligibility criteria for offering credit cards.
4. What are the types of credit cards?
Credit cards includes variety of categories such as
4.1 Premium cards
Premium cards offer the Cardholders several benefits like access to special events, concierge services, and airport lounge access, etc., but under a lump-sum of annual fee, the target audiences of premium cards are mostly high earners and big spenders
4.2 Secured Credit cards
A secured credit card is supposedly a card that is backed by the deposit made by the cardholder. This serves as collateral or a security deposit under our account, in case of any emergency where we cannot make a payment, this security deposit saves the cardholder.
4.3 Standard Credit cards
Standard Credit cards often have no specific perks or features with usually no annual fee. This card helps us to have a balance of up to a certain number of credit points. After which the credits gets used up when we make a purchase and more new credits are made available once the payment is made
4.4 Charge cards
A charge card is a card that makes the payment for the purchases made by the cardholder but in turn. The cardholder is expected to pay the debt back in full within the due date to the card issuer, which is commonly stipulated on monthly basis.
4.5 Balance transfer cards
This is nothing but the outstanding debts in a credit card account gets transferred to another credit card account from a different card company which usually involves very low introductory fees and interest rate.
4.6 Rewards cards
Reward credit cards provide us with cashback rewards, points, and many offers, that enhance the perks of making the payment via credit card over a debit card or cash.
5. How can I Legally Stop Paying Credit Cards?
Many people are unaware of the fact that they can legally stop paying the debt. They simply think it’s mandatory to pay their debt no matter what otherwise they’ll have to end up in prison, but that’s not the case. There’s no more debtor’s prison, one can approach legally to stop paying the debts
5.1 Steps involved to stop credit cards usage
Firstly you’ll have to make use of the remaining credit limits for essential reasons like rent, mortgage, and so on, if your intention is not to go bankrupt, then it’s legally perfect to do.
Stop using your credit card once they reach their potential limit. If you stop paying them, they would gradually cancel the credit card if you leave it unused for several months.
It would be better if you change you change the contact number because the credit card company would try all the means to contact you
You could write to your credit card company and agencies not to send you past due letters anymore and tell them not to call you at work, if they keep disobeying you can also pass legal action against them under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
6. What are the Top advantages of using credit cards?
Credit card holds a list of advantages such as
- The key advantage of using a credit card is earning reward points for every purchase you made.
- The second is that it is a good protection tool for purchasing and traveling.
- It helps us to manage the cash flow.
- The credit card provides user-friendly operation.
- They allow us to do foreign transaction without charging additional fees.
Hereby concluding that, Credit card is beneficiary in it’s own way. If you are generating a good income, you can opt for credit cards. it also need to be managed. If you fail to manage it , it will raise your credit card debt. choose the credit card wisely and reap the credit card benefits.
A zero balance in the credit card account can make a positive impact for a short period but may pose a risk for a long time regarding credit health.
Sometimes the bank may pose a response to the inactive accounts in such a way that could affect the credit score down the road, at times they may limit or even close the account.
You’ll have to practice balance to have a credit card account, in cases when we leave the credit card unused for a longer period, it may hurt the credit scores of the cardholder.
Even though, the card issuers derive their income from annual fees and interests, The major source of income to the card-issuing company is the charges they impose on every purchase that is made by the cardholder when they swipe using them.
This being said, even if the cardholder leaves the credit card unused for a longer time, the company has to manage their account which probably won’t be beneficial to them. This ultimately leads to the cancellation of the unused credit card.
