The Credit CARD Act
A bill of rights for credit cardholders
The Credit CARD Act is often called the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights. President Obama signed the bill into law in May, 2009. Many of the most significant provisions of the law took effect in February, 2010. The law has two main purposes:
- Fairness – Prohibit certain practices that are unfair or abusive such as hiking up the rate on an existing balance or allowing a consumer to go overlimit and then imposing an overlimit fee.
- Transparency – Make the rates and fees on credit cards more transparent so consumers can understand how much they are paying for their credit card and can compare different cards.
Recent work
- Key Findings from Conference Presentations – includes original slideshows
- Text of Professor Warren’s opening remarks at the conference
- Blog post by David Silberman our Assistant Director, Card Markets
- The CARD Act: One Year Later Factsheet
- The CFPB card markets team surveyed nine credit card issuers. The issuers submitted this aggregated response.
CARD Act survey
The CFPB commissioned a survey to explore how people perceive some of the changes made by the Credit CARD Act. This is the bureau’s first survey, and we want to highlight the results. Please check out the findings and explore the survey response data below.
Infographics
Survey Results
- Download raw files of survey responses: csv | txt
- Survey Methodology
