Word: visaed
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...decided I was going to be a new, cooler, more outgoing version of me. I would no longer go by Beth, as my high school friends called me--it was on to the sleeker, more sophisticated Elizabeth. My new standard-issue GTE Visa bought me a tastefully simple Gap wardrobe to replace the brighter colors of my more attention-getting high school garb. And I brought absolutely everything I owned to school. Every item of clothing, every photograph, every handy gadget, every poster and wall sign, because the truth is that I was terrified I wouldn...
...easy to think of America's two major credit card companies as competitors in a classic tradition: Yankees vs. Dodgers, Coke vs. Pepsi, Visa vs. MasterCard. But according to the Department of Justice, that sheen of rivalry may be little more than a carefully maintained illusion. After examining Visa and MasterCard's overwhelming presence in the American financial market (the companies issue roughly 75 percent of the country's credit cards and enlist about 7,000 banks), DOJ lawyers have brought monopoly charges against the credit peddlers. In a case opening Monday in New York's District Court, the Justice...
...course, if you ask most retailers, it's not just banks that are kept under the companies' collective thumb. Most American consumers are familiar with the tag line for Visa's advertising campaign touting the company's omnipresence: After describing some tantalizing vacation spot, hotel or safari, the voiceover intones, "And they don't take American Express." The merchants in question, according to MasterCard and Visa detractors, don't take American Express (or anyone else's card) because they're under considerable pressure not to. In a class action lawsuit distinct from the DOJ case, 4 million retailers have joined...
...despite the grim realities of Visa and MasterCard ubiquity, there could be a silver lining in all this for consumers. While the DOJ case could take most of the summer to unfold, the cumulative effects of such intense negative media scrutiny could become apparent much more quickly - Visa and MasterCard customers should keep an eye out for peace offerings (in the form of lowered monthly interest rates or other acts of magnanimity) over the next few months...
DIED. WILLIAM BOYLE, 88, visionary banker who developed the first bank-issued credit card, the Franklin Charge Account Plan, in 1951, paving the way for Visa and MasterCard and hastening a new age of consumer spending; in Garden City...