The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure
(CARD) Act has certainly offered customers’ protection from
interest rate increases and quick changes to contracts. But the
act, which went into effect in late February, contained a
loophole that could leave cardholders susceptible to one of the
credit card companies’ old tricks, according to The New York
Times. Card issuers set payment plans In the past, if you had
two cards, one with a $1,000 balance and a 3% APR and another
with a $300 balance and a 12% APR, any payment you made would
automatically be credited to the lower-APR card. Only once you
paid off the balance on the 3% APR card would you be able to
begin paying your smaller, higher-APR balance on the second
card. The CARD Act, which was meant to protect cardholders from
predatory practices by card issuers, originally did away with
credit card issuers’ ability to apply customers’ payments to
lower-APR balances. But during the course of passing the bill, a
loophole was created that allowed