small business credit

Just a Little Minor Detail in Credit Card Reform Legislation - Small Business Still Screwed

A funny thing happened on the way to bill passage. Congress forgot all about small business and none of the credit card predatory lending limits apply to small business.

The House just passed the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights, which restricts some aggressive tactics by credit card companies, like arbitrary rate changes, applying payments in a way that maximizes interest charges, and double-cycle billing. But the bill as written doesn’t apply to small business credit cards, even though such cards are personally guaranteed and function exactly the same way consumer credit cards do. An amendment that would have made this change explicitly apply to cards issued to businesses with fewer than 500 employees did not make it out of committee yesterday.