Under the new credit cards requirements, gone will be the days where one can see credit card promoters at major shopping centers or airports enticing their potential clients to fill in forms for new credit cards. If they still wanted to carry out such activities, they will not get enough clients that are eligible to own extra credit cards. Also, our wallets will be more manageable since the number of credit cards allowed will be limited.
As an effort to ensure the usage of credit card is at a manageable level, the requirements for credit card eligibility and credit limits has been raised. The minimum annual income requirement has been raised from RM24,000 per annum (RM2,000 per month) versus previously RM18,000 per annum (RM1,500 per month).
Those earning RM3,000 per month (RM36,000 per annum) and less will have to adhere to the following conditions:
1) They can only hold two credit cards from a maximum of two issuing bank.
2) For each issuing bank, the maximum credit limit is double the monthly income of the card holder. Therefore, for two issuing banks, the maximum combined credit limit is four times the monthly income.
Credit card issuers are also required to ad-opt fair, transparent and responsible practices under the guidelines.
Issuers are not allowed to increase card holders’ credit limit without consent nor are they allowed to offer credit advance in the form of cheques unless requested. I totally agree with this measure because before this we are being bombarded with all sorts of unwelcoming offers from the banks and most of the offers are advantageous only to the banks.
Effective January 1 next year, transaction alerts via SMS to card holders will be implemented after transactions are performed followed by personal identification number (PIN) verification for all card transactions from Jan 1, 2015. (Hope measures to prevent fishing or scam will be implemented if such measures are being taken into consideration).
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HERE.
