The UK Cards Association responds to Government’s Consumer White Paper
Paul Rodford, Head of Card Payments, The UK Cards Association responds:
“In today’s White Paper the Government has restated its intent, first announced back in March, to ban unsolicited credit cheques. We will cooperate fully with them whilst also attempting to avoid negatively impacting customers who may wish to continue using them in certain circumstances such as for balance transfers on promotional rates.
“The credit card industry is pleased that a key initiative is about delivering Real Help Now by encouraging other non-credit card lenders to follow our lead and give customers in financial difficulty a breathing space. Our credit card products only make up one fifth of all unsecured borrowing in the UK so we recognise the importance of extending such valuable support to customers struggling in this exceptional economic period.”
“We will continue to work with Government on the areas they have identified. In the past few years we have made lots of changes to help provide better transparency on our products and to make sure we uphold stringent lending practices. The need to make responsible lending decisions and to support customers to make responsible borrowing decisions can never be more important than it is right now. It’s in nobody’s interests to lend to someone who can’t afford it or to have customers who are unable to pay back what they’ve borrowed.”
ENDS
For further information contact the press office on 020 7711 6316
press@apacs.org.uk
Notes to editors:
The UK Cards Association is the leading trade body for the card industry in the UK. With a membership that includes all major credit, debit and charge card issuers, and card acquiring banks, the role of the Association is both to unify and represent the UK card payments industry. It was formed in April 2009 as the successor body to the APACS Card Payments Group.
