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

Well with Christmas only one week away and just like some of my readers, I’m running a little short on cash, while i’ve done all my shopping I wanted to see what options are available online for those last minute gift ideas or even emergency money for those who are traveling locally.

I finally stumbled across Cash Advance 1500 payday loans, which is a cash advance (also known as pay day advance) directory, which lists several Cash advance websites which offer a variety of pay day loan offers.

Based on the information on their “How Cash Advances Work” page, applicants do need to pass a minimum criteria.

• Being Employed for at least 3 consecutive months.
• Earning at least $1,000 per month in income.
• Having a valid checking account open for at least 3 months.

While I haven’t been in the situation where I’d needed a Cash Advance Loan online or off line but one should follow the advise highlighted in at their “Choosing a Cash Advance Lender” page as there are Advantages of Pay Day loans but suggest that you research your options first and I think CashAdvance1500.com is a good place to start that research.

These figures are astounding, only seven years ago only 11 percent of bankruptcies had been brought on by credit cards. Fast forward to today, 27% of the bankruptcies are credit card related according to the data from the Insolvency and Trustee service of Australia.

The largest increase in credit cards related bankruptcies were from New South Wales and Victoria.

source: Infochoice

Do you keep hoping from one low rate credit card offer to another to help lessen your credit card balance? Well get ready to get hit a new balance fee charge. According to Infochoice, many of the credit card issuers are aware of this trend and are now looking closely at applicants credit card history to indentify these patterns, which they call “rate tarts”

Credit card issuers have become more wary of “rate tarts” who shift card balances around to take advantage of introductory low rate offers according to Infochoice’s general manager, Denis Orrock. He warns that while consumers may get three or four chances to switch cards companies will start rejecting applications. Card issuers can access credit history files to see if there is a pattern of applying for a card every six months and may decide that you are not the type of customer they want if rate-tart activity is identified.

Mr Orrock said that he expects card companies will introduce balance transfer fees where a percentage of the transferred amount is charged to cover costs and discourage card churn.