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Total Rewards Credit Card

Card issued by FIA Card Services, NA.
Earn 1 Reward Credit for every $1 you charge in net retail purchases anywhere
0% Introductory Annual Percentage Rate (APR) on balance transfers and cash advance checks for one year
No annual fee

Earn 1 Bonus Reward Credit for every $1 you charge in net retail purchases anywhere- at the grocery store, mall, gas station, online, even when you pay recurring monthly bills. These Reward Credits will be added to your Total Rewards account balance, which can also be filled by your gaming play at any Harrah's Operating Company casinos.§

Total Rewards Credit Card

DID YOU KNOW?

	If you are deep in debt and have a bad credit history then finding a company that offers a bad credit consolidation service may seem the ideal solution. However, it is important to investigate all of the options before taking such a drastic step. Bad credit consolidation solutions usually come at a hefty price in the long run so it is vital to choose carefully. Most people who have amounts of debt do not any form of bad credit consolidation solution as long as you make every effort to spend less and pay off your bills. Obviously, you do not need to pay a bad credit consolidation advisor to tell you that. Before you look to taking out any kind of bad credit consolidation loan it is essential to call the companies that you owe and plead your case for lower interest rates and a longer payment schedule. You may well find that you will be given reasonable arrangements if you explain that you are considering using a bad credit consolidation service. Many firms would prefer you to pay less over a longer period of time than have to deal with the negotiations of a bad credit consolidation agency. The interest rates of most bad credit consolidation packages are more or less the same and any very low rates that are advertised are for people who have great credit. You need to be sure you know exactly what the cost of entering the bad credit consolidation program is, and whether it will be worth it in the end, so you should inquire about interest charges and any other fees that might stack up during the program. Your credit rating may or may not benefit from working with a bad credit consolidation plan however it is unlikely to make your credit rating worse. Many creditors will actually see that having a bad credit consolidation plan in effect as a sign of you trying to get your finances back on track. A bad credit consolidation plan and loan is most certainly a better option than declaring bankruptcy. Bankruptcy will follow you for a long time whereas the bad credit consolidation loan only remains for as long as you are paying it off. Chapter 7 Bankruptcy will be part of your financial history for roughly 10 years. Chapter 13 can be much longer depending on how many years you need to pay off your debts. If you do decide to go forward with declaring bankruptcy, rather than taking a bad credit consolidation loan then make sure you are prepared to deal with the consequences.

This is the age of plastic money. It's not uncommon for the typical consumer in the western world to go weeks at a time without ever handling a coin or bill. Everything we need is available to us with the simple "swik-swik' sound of a credit card sliding through a reader. Supplies for the office, flowers for the wife, meals and drinks out, and an endless supply of useful products available for sale through the Internet can all be bought with naught a cent to be seen.

The big question is: "How safe is all this plastic?"

Cash has its obvious benefits. When you buy a sandwich for $2.95 and you hand the cashier a $5 bill, you know you haven't been ripped off when he hands you $2.05 right then and there. But when you hand your card to a waitress at the local chain restaurant, how do you know she hasn't taken a moment to sneak into the office and copy your card number and signature? You don't, and the implications of this question are having a serious effect on credit card companies and the merchants they do business with.

In response to these issues, the big credit card companies have developed more secure ways to do business. MasterCard International and Visa got together and came up with a set of guidelines called the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. This is a list of 12 guidelines that imposes strict regulations on all transactions taking place between the card company and the merchants it trades with. While these standards have been in place since 2005, merchants are taking some time to catch up to them. However, in the past year there has been marked improvement, and both credit card companies have stepped up their tactics to the point where merchants may be experiencing losses of service if they do not fall in line soon. (You can read the 12 guidelines and the details of this plan on the homepages of Visa or MasterCard.)

Discover Card has responded to the pressure for more secure methods with it's own program. They call it the Secure Online Account Number program. Anytime you use your Discover card to purchase a product online, their program will generate a random account number to "stand-in" for the one on your card. You then send this number to the merchant in place of the real number. When the number is verified with Discover Card, it will link to your account and the purchase is charged to you. The benefit of this system is that the merchant never sees your true account number. Only you and Discover Card have access to it. Once the transaction is completed the randomly generated account number is no longer valid, so any attempts to use it result in denial.

A security method that online merchants are employing is the requirement of a shipping address that matches the billing address on your credit card. This is to guard against thieves who may steal your account number but will have no access to your billing address. This way, if your card is stolen, it can only be used to make purchases that will ship to your address. Any prospective thieves will have to pick up their orders from your mailbox, not something the average anonymity-seeking thief will want to do.

There are also third party systems in place for ensuring online credit card security. VeriSign's SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) technology is the leader in the field. VeriSign will give each merchant it conducts business with 2 "keys" (like coding alphabets), a public key and a private key. The public key is used to encrypt information, and the private key is used to decipher it. VeriSign's technology now offers this encryption in 128- to 256-bit encryption, which provides a nearly un-guessable number of possible combinations of codes.