The New Future

As I listened to the suit described this new credit card his client was launching, all I'm thinking was how his client sleep at night.

Citibank just launched a new credit card with a monthly limit of S$500 that was clearly targeting at tertiary students. It's actually meant for 18 – 35 years old who do not make the S$30,000 a year cut but it seemed to be using the age old marketing gimmick of 'get-them-while-they-are-young'.

In the near future, we will have 21 year olds bankruptees. Scenarios such as this "I don't always have much cash on hand. A credit card will come in handy when I want to buy that $399 Hugo Boss shirt. If I wait for my $150 weekly allowance, the shirt might be gone." will never happen to junior college student Sng Ren Zheng, who is keen to apply for a card after he turns 18 next month according to a Straits Times report. Instead of 'getting-them-while-they-are-young', I think its 'getting-them-in-debt-while-they-are-young'.

And the icing on the cake? Instead of a 24% interest rate, this new fancy clear card has a 28% interest rate to guard against default risk and bad debts.

I take back my rhetorical question in the beginning of this post. I think the Citibankers are sleeping very well indeed.

~Seamonkey~