MyCanvas Card exciting Surfing in Hawaii promo is valued at at up to $11,474.50.

The first randomly drawn entrant will win a trip to Hawaii, with two economy return flights departing from Sydney, Australia, eight nights’ accommodation in a 4 Star Hotel and airport transfers included. Value $6,500.
The promotion ends on 5/11/2008 so there’s still time for you to get your MyCanvas card or reload your card at the closest participating store.

Remember, If you register online you can get it for free when you use the following promotional code “loadcashplay“.  Visit mycanvascard.com.au

The Canvas Pink card has been designed to provide consumers with an alternative to the cards currently available on the site that allows customers to choose what represents their personality best.

remember If you register online you can get it for free when you use the following promotional code “loadcashplay“.
Visit mycanvascard.com.au

SCX Global joined the Rêv Worldwide network of payments companies for underserved markets today through an investment by MPOWER Ventures. The development promises to accelerate the widespread availability of basic financial services and the opportunities they afford for the more than 300 million underserved consumers in the Asia-Pacific region by giving SCX Global, now Rêv Asia Pacific, the expertise and capital it needs to replicate its early success with prepaid in Australia throughout the region.

The partnership unites SCX Global, the company responsible for bringing prepaid cards to the Asia-Pacific region, with Roy and Bertrand Sosa, the industry veterans who pioneered the multi-billion-dollar prepaid debit market as founders of U.S. prepaid leader NetSpend, making prepaid a broadly accepted form of payment and bringing financial empowerment to millions of unbanked and underbanked Americans.  With backing from MPOWER Ventures and support from MPOWER Labs – the venture fund and complementary business accelerator the Sosas launched earlier this summer – the Rêv Worldwide companies have developed international networks of retail distribution and reload points for prepaid debit cards and an advanced global processing platform connected to the major payments networks, including MasterCard and VISA.

MPOWER Ventures and MPOWER Labs focus on investing in financial innovation for underserved markets and collaborating with likeminded entrepreneurs who share their commitment to building a more inclusive global financial system that reaches those currently excluded from access to basic financial services, more than 2 billion people worldwide.

If your like me your still contemplating whether or not to get yourself another prepaid VISA debit card in light of the BOPO fall out, unfortunately I needed one so signed up for the My Canvas Card Prepaid Visa Card, which thankfully arrived today (Now i can pay for my web hosting bills ).

I registered online for the card online about 2 weeks ago, for those of you looking to get your hands one now, there are available at your local new agencies. If you register online you can get it for free when you use the following promotional code “loadcashplay“.
Visit mycanvascard.com.au

I’ll be topping up my card and test driving my new Yellow Smiley Face Canvas Card tomorrow.

I’ve been strapped for time but will post and overview of their fee schedule and update the rest of the site.

My Canvas Card is here

Bopo customers will have received the following letter in the mail, I just received the letter today, explaining the current situation with the Bill Express Ltd and Bopo Customers funds.

If any BOPO cardholders have any enquiries, Cuscal’s has experience support staff on hand to help with any questions regarding your account. Contact Cuscal on 02 8299 9000 between 7:30am and 6:00pm (AEST) Monday to Friday.

I was hoping that I’d be able to transfer my funds to my Paypal account though, it seems I don’t have an option to fund my Paypal account using a credit card. If anyone knows of a way to fund a Paypal account using the BOPO card please leave a comment.

I just checked my BOPO card account to verify the card total so i didn’t look a fool when i buy my happy meal today, unfortunately was unable to access the account. See video below.

I’ll head out to see if i can get the account total via eftpos.

Read the rest of this entry »

If your unsure what type of BOPO prepaid VISA card you currently, Cuscal has released today another Q and A article for BOPO card holders. Please visit Cuscal website for more information regarding card types.

Last night the Bopo.com.au website has been updated to inform customers that Cuscal will cancel service to BOPO cardholders in 30 days (Aug 15th 2008). BOPO cardholders are advised to withdraw funds by the 15th of Aug. Any withdrawal request after the 15th Aug will have to go through a reimbursement application via Cuscal.

from their website…

As a direct result of the above changes to Bill Express and bopo, effective 30 calendar days from the date of this notice, Cuscal is cancelling services to bopo cardholders as described in the product disclosure statement. Please see your product disclosure statement under “Cancellation of Services”.

What you should do

The money stored on your bopo card will be returned to you. To avoid having to claim a refund you should withdraw your funds via ATM or EFTPOS purchases before the expiry of the 30-day notice period. After this period, any remaining funds on your bopo card will only be accessible through an application for reimbursement to Cuscal.

Visit BOPO site to read the entire notice.

For those of you not familiar with what’s happened with the BOPO Prepaid VISA card company and their Parent company Bill Express, The AGE, BusinessDay has an article on the whole Bill Express fiasco.

The Bill Express is said to owe creditors could be more than $250 million. Debt owed to New agencies across Australia has yet to be included in the debt total.

Optus is owed an estimated $50 million from the supply of prepaid recharge codes to Bill Express, with Vodafone owed $30 million, 3 Mobile up to $20 million and $10 million for Telstra, as well as a smaller amount for smaller companies that provide prepaid overseas telephone credit. Bill Express also owes finance company Asset Secure $13 million, German broker Deutsche Forfait $10 million and $7 million for finance of its electronic terminals.

Source: BusinessDay

While big companies are hit hard, those hit hardest are the employees left without redundancy packages or benefits along side Newsagency ownerw who are now forced into unwanted legal action regarding their Bill Express Contracts. Newsagency owners have expressed their opinions on the Bill Express Fall out on a well known blog - newsagencyblog

BOPO Prepaid visa card holders can breath a sigh of relief, based on a press release from Cuscal Website (The Financial Institute that endorsed the BOPO prepaid VISA cards ) Bopo Customer funds are safe.

Below is an excerpt of the 11th July Press release. Read the entire Cuscal press release here.

Bill Express advised the market on 8 July 2008 that it has been forced to appoint administrators. This situation impacts the bopo Visa card, which is issued by Cuscal but owned by Bill Express (through a subsidiary company called bopo cards (Australia) Pty Ltd).

bopo cardholders are right to be concerned about the Bill Express news, however cardholder funds are being kept safe by Cuscal. It is important to highlight that Cuscal is a separate company to Bill Express. Cuscal is a regulated Authorised Deposit-taking Institution (ADI) with a AA- Standard & Poors’ credit rating. This makes Cuscal as safe as any other Australian bank.

Cardholders can be assured that the value stored on bopo cards will be returned to them. However, the administrator now managing Bill Express is following due process and unfortunately this is limiting the services and functionality available to bopo cardholders.

At the time of publication on Friday 11 July 2008, cardholders can still make EFTPOS purchases and ATM withdrawals, but cannot reload money on their cards.

In the event that any cardholders cannot use ATM or EFTPOS purchases to withdraw funds, Cuscal has established a process to facilitate reimbursement of funds stored within bopo card accounts.

Cuscal has offered a chart to help explain how Bopo Cardholders can view card balances and withdraw funds.

View Bopo Card Balance Chart

If your like me, your also one of the thousands of Bopo prepaid card holders left in cold, wondering what’s happening with the available funds within their Bopo prepaid accounts.

As of last week BOPO and all of it’s associated companies are under appointment of an Administrator or in the process of being sold.

From what I’ve gathered online, many Bopo prepaid customers are unable to get in contact with BOPO customer support, this is due to the company being forced into administration. Comments from the Newagencyblog have indicated that BOPO call center staff were let go last Tuesday.

Financial Institiute Cuscal, which handles Authorised Deposit-taking from BOPO has stated that they will provide support for BOPO customers.

Cuscal will work towards meeting its obligations to current bopo cardholders, including of course, ensuring cardholders receive their money. However, the future of the bopo product is likely to be limited. Cuscal has noted that decisions taken by the administrator demonstrate an intention to rapidly cease operational support for the bopo card product.

I suggest those of you with available funds to look into withdrawing funds immediately. I only have very limited funds in my account, grand total of $5 (I think). I’ll be withdrawing mine tomorrow… guess who’s getting a happy meal tomorrow.

If you suddenly need to make payments and can find the funds for them, then you should consider applying for a loan. What type of loan, you ask? Well that depends on what your current financial needs are. Don’t worry, these kinds of loans are easy to understand, and you can find tons of info on them online. For starters, here are three types of loans:

For example, if you are hoping to close in on that house purchase you’ve always wanted to do, you can opt to get a loan under home equity line of credit. In this manner, you will use your house as collateral, and a certain percentage of the appraised value of the house may be obtained through a loan. All you need to do is determine a loan term and be religious in paying your monthly dues.

However, in times when you need to wipe out your credit card debts and other payable, you need to get into a debt consolidation program. In this kind of loan, you borrow an amount that can pay off all your debts, leaving you with one debt payable to only one lender. This is a welcome option if you want to repair your credit. Take note that this type of loan is subject to many requirements, so you need to be well informed before you apply for one.

Lastly, if you find yourself stuck in a financial rut, and you need to make payments in the soonest time possible, such as for car repairs, home repairs, or medical expenses, you can get a cash advance loan instead. This way, you can borrow an amount that you can pay off on your next payday. Online payday loans are ideal when you have emergency payments that need to be taken care of.

I’m not sure about you guys but if your like me who writes on multiple blogs, you tend to become more Dependant on external services like web hosting companies.

Like many bloggers online who spend hours and hours fine tuning their personal or professional blogs and websites. Developing engaging content to keep visitors entertained and amused. We tend to glance over these technical issues like web hosting and adopt a “it’ll be fine for now” attitude. But if it the content that brings these visitors the website should be protecting it?

What happens when your web servers crash and all the hard work is lost because you decided earlier on to save a few dollars per month on hosting.

The reality is many bloggers out there aren’t protecting their most valuable assests, their time and content. While a 2 dollar hosting plan may seem like s a sweet deal, your missing out on some great features like daily backups and load balancing.

When considering a hosting package you really need to compare features with other web hosting services online to find the best deal.

Identifying the best web hosting, can be an overwhelming task, I recommend searching Google for “compare web hosting” which should provide you with a variety of web hosting comparison services that allow you to compare hosting features and prices.

Another non-bank moves into the banking arena after retailer Woolworths signed a deal with HSBC to issue the Woolworths’ credit card, due for release later this year.

The deal was a result of a global tender process undertaken by Woolworths’ financial services team last year.

“HSBC is a global leader in credit cards with world class technology and expertise,” Michael Luscombe, Woolworths’ CEO, said.

HSBC has long-term successful partnerships with large retailer card programs overseas, such as, Marks & Spencer’s in the UK and Saks in the USA.

“HSBC manages over 125 million credit cards worldwide, with established co-branded and white label alliances with over 100 of the world’s most respected companies, “ Stuart Davis, chief executive of HSBC Bank Australia, said.

Luscombe noted, “HSBC’s experience makes it a perfect partner for Woolworths to leverage our unique distribution reach and customer base in Australia.”

Woolworths stores process 114 million transactions or 11 per cent of all credit card transactions in Australia each year.

The companies are expected to sign a formal agreement by the end of first quarter 2008.

source [Full article here]

The new David Jones American Express card will be launched in time to capitalize on the busy Christmas trading period, which last year generated sales of about A$36 billion.

David Jones’ financial services business will deliver at least 7.5 percent earnings before interest and tax growth (EBIT) a year over fiscal year 2008, it said in the statement.

More on the David Jones Credit Card

Running an online blog can be very liberating and cathartic experience but at the same time it be very frustrating when having to deal with web hosting and domain registration issues, more so if you have your blog or website hosted overseas.

If your not so tech savvy, its a good rule of thumb to select a web hosting provider or domain registra that be available to your beck and call in your timezone. Last thing you need are issues that can be resolved or priority accelerated after a simple call drag on for days as emails fly back and forth through there ticketing system.

Unlike webhosting, the domain registration process usually is a fairly simple process where even non tech savvy bloggers like myself can feel like professional at the end of registering a domain. You won’t need to have a web hosting plan to register your domain name, it’s usually a good idea to register the domain first as there may be other people looking to register the same domain as you.

Once you’ve developed enough content for your blog then you should start to consider your webhosting package.

It’s looking bad for over 350,ooo Victorians who are juggling more than 3 credit card or charge cards at the same time. Finance counselors are seeing people who can’t afford to pay off their credit cards debts by taking out more credit cards to pay off the debt of the initial credit card and subsequent cards.

” It’s not unusual for people we see to have six or more credit cards.” - Jan Pentland : Australian Financial Counselling and Credit Reform Association.

read more

Borrowers should be wary of banks seeking to recover the higher cost of credit due to the global credit crunch over coming months. Total personal lending and credit card debt rose by 13.2 per cent over the past year to $151 billion. Some credit card and fixed loan rates have already headed north and the big banks issued warnings over the closing months of 2007 that there would be more to come. Markets are also tipping that there is a strong possibility of an increase in the official cash rate when the Reserve banks meets again at the beginning of February. With Bendigo Bank’s variable home loan rate already at 8.60 per cent compared with a standard rate of 8.57 per cent it will pay for consumers to shop around for the best rates.

By News.com.au

Major Banks are looking to generate more consumer interest for the EFTPOS system by creating a new commmercial entity to help promote wider use of the EFTPOS system.

With the increased competition from credit card companies like Mastercard and Visa along with their prepaid debit cards major Banks are looking to for new innovative ways to generate awareness. EFTPOS systems have their definite advantages, their low fraud rate, low implementation costs. Currently Merchants have to change to their systems work with the new smartcards and have been recently been given an extension to have these new protocols in place.

In Australia alone, consumers already generate around 110 million purchases worth $7.5 billion every month making Eftpos is the most widely used system of its type.

Visa has extended the period allowed for merchants to upgrade their smartcard payments technology to 30 September 2009. The upgrades will reduce the risk of fraud and some retailers who comply could receive discounts of up to 25 per cent on their interchange fees. The Australian Merchant Payments Forum chairman, Russell Zimmerman, has said that the extension was appreciated as the extra time would help offset set-up costs which can be expensive, particularly for merchants that owned their own terminals.

By InfoChoice.com.au

Not sure about you out there but I’ve started to see a new trend in the types of gifts i received for Christmas and my Birthday. Instead of boxers and socks I recieved Giftcards.
I had received 2 JB HIFI giftcards, Bunnings, Itunes GiftCards.

I’m one of those people that are notoriously difficult to buy for and I think Giftcards fills that niche and based on the latest figures from the retail store Myer, I’m not the only one that’s looking at giftcards as gifts.

Myer has reported an increase in gift cards sales which will help generate generate sales throughout the January stock take sales period. With Gift cards becoming more convenient and accessible The Australian Retailers Association is predicting that consumers will spend 7 per cent more in the post-Christmas sales period this year than they did last year.

For those that are unsure about Giftcards, There’s a good chance that a $50 Giftcard from JB HIFI or Itunes would put a smile on anyones face, even for those who are difficult to buy for.

I hope you all had a great Christmas break and looking forward to the new year. Having a few weeks break allowed me to kickback and do a little research to see what other online opportunities are available for the New Year. I stumbled across an interesting online service that many allows bloggers to share their opinions about online services or products and get paid. This is done through a blog advertising network. While there are several online services out there, this particular one is done through the Smorty blog advertising network. While their services doesn’t seem to have many financial services available at this time, There seems to be a lot of companies looking for product based and online gaming reviews which may interest those of you that run more general or entertainment focus blogs.

Like anything else, do a little bit more research and identify some of the pros and cons of each blog advertising network. Depending on the networks bloggers can earn anything from $6 to $60 per review.

Latest credit card fraud data shows that there are 14.8 cases per 100,000 transactions in the 12 months to June 2006 to 16.7 this year. which is quite low, though when compared to Britain which has a staggering 141 cases of fraud for every 100,000 transactions.

Does this mean Australia is a little more robust when dealing with financial data online & Offline than our British counter parts? I guess we’ll have to wait and see what next years figures indicate.

The article data didn’t breakdown the data between Online and Offline Credit Card fraud.

below is an excerpt for the article.

Debit cards also experienced a higher rate of fraud, going from 1.7 to 2.1 cases for every 100,000 transactions.
Fraud was down in other categories according to the latest set of data from the Australian Payments Clearing Association.
Cheque fraud fell from 2.4 cents per $1,000 to 1.4 cents while EFTPOS and ATM fraud dropped from 8.2 cents to 7 cents for every $1,000.
Overall the number of fraudulent transactions increased from 7 to 8 cases for every 100,000 with a total value of $128.5 million for the year to June.

Source: Infochoice.com.au

What happens when you need to make a personal loan and have a less than perfect credit rating?

While having a bad credit rating can take time to repair, there are several Prepaid credit cards providers now offer to provide credit bureaus with customers Billing payment history. This is great but your looking to take a out a loan or a new credit card.

Well for those in the dark, there are free online resource sites that help those with a less than perfect credit rating. Websites like BadCreditOffers.com - bad credit loans lists all the current financial offerings for consumers with a “bad credit” rating.

From Credit cards, Home loans, Personal loans, Car Loans, users will be able to compare all the available offers

The companies that are listed specialize in getting those of you with bad credit, approved quick and easily.

Like everything else, do as much research and shopping around for the best offers that suit your financial situation.

Researching Payday Loans the pay day loan has been an interesting task, there’s a myriad of payday loan services online offering services like the No Fax Payday Loans service at Paydayloanquotes.com.The idea of being able get a payday loan sounds ideal but if you use their online calculator you’ll easily see that this service comes at a cost. The useful Loan calculator will give you an idea of how much your potential loan amount will be once their finance charge has been added.

While the site does offer some very useful information, I noticed something that made me question their service.

To the untrained eye the GeoTrust logo looks fine and those unfamiliar with the logo may automatically assume this was a valid Geotrust seal. As someone that works in the online industry uses online ecommerce sites on a daily basis, I make it routine to check quality seals of any site i plan to use.

Standard GeoTrust seals look similar to the image below but they are actually hosted on the GeoTrust website so that the ecommerce site is unable to modify or claim to be a GeoTrust member.

While I can’t comment on the rest of the service but this is a major oversight and they should rectify this.

If payday loans is something your considering, I suggest using the check list below when searching for an pay loan lender online.

• Site displays active Verifications Seals
• Customer testimonies
• Live Customer Support
• The application should be completed on a secure web page.
• Detailed F.A.Q pages
• Company information
• Phone Number should be available online
• Call the phone number on the site