Saturday, November 1, 2008

Using online banking to track your visa credit card expenses

By Simon Jeffs

It is truly mind-boggling how people managed to keep a track of their expenses a decade ago. You would either wait for your statement each month or, if you were in a hurry, queue up in a branch for an hour or two. Of course, you could always phone your bank but that often took almost as long. There was a time when telephone banking was the bee's knees and considered an innovative and speedy way to bank. Nowadays you have a much easier way to keep track of your finances and that is through good old-fashioned online banking.

Online banking is an amazing tool that puts people in control of monitoring their money like never before. For some it is hard to imagine life without online banking. Simply enter your user name and password and you can view your accounts, change your PIN numbers, order new cheque books, and even request new cards themselves. There are so many things that can be done online that the full scope of online banking is often overlooked.

Most major financial service providers, including those that provide Visa credit cards, offer online banking. Online banking has an even greater value for credit card users as it enables you to make payments onto your card whenever you want. This means that there is no longer any reason why you should miss a repayment and be charged. You can make payments onto your credit card via a bank account or through another card - the choice is yours. The only thing to be wary about is that the payment onto your card can take a number of days to clear - sometimes 5 to 10 days. However this is quicker than the alternative, which is to jump into a car and drive to your branch, join the queue and so on.

You can also view your statements online so that you can keep track of exactly what money is leaving your account and what repayments you have made. On top of this you can also print out the statement should you need to; you can even print off past statement as and when you want. With credit cards transactions are largely made in real-time; this means that all of your transactions should appear on your statement instantaneously and consequently you should never be caught out by stray payments hanging around in cyberspace.

Another unique feature to Visa credit card online banking is that you can request a higher credit limit if you want to. Once again this is a lot easier than the alternatives of queuing in a branch or enduring endless hours on your phone with telephone banking. Of course your request will once again need to be approved by the lender, which is still going to take some time, but online banking does help speed up this process. This also means that you will not be caught out by going over your credit limit. If you see that you are going to go over you can do something about there and then. Whether your new limit is accepted or not will depend on your credit rating and how you have been using the card in the past.

As you can see it is extremely easy to track your Visa credit card expenses using your card provider?s online banking systems. As well as being able to use these systems to view your expenses there are often many other functions available that help make your card using life simpler. What?s more, signing up for online banking is often straightforward and quick. The applications themselves are designed to user-friendly. If you wish to make use of your card provider?s online banking systems you simply need to visit their website and follow the on-screen instructions.

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