Stay Alert With These Credit Card Notifications!

Sometimes it seems like stress and money go hand in hand. In fact, 60% of American adults named money as a significant source of stress. There are ways, however, to manage financial stress and make life easier.

Credit cards are great for covering transactions and building credit history, but they can cause unneeded stress as far as staying on top of payments and spending limits. Fortunately, most card accounts feature credit monitoring and alerts. Credit card alerts are set up to notify users about a host of activity on their accounts in real time, and can be personalized as far as the type of alert and frequency.

Account alerts are typically transmitted to cardholders through email, text message or a push notification from the card issuer’s mobile app. Here are some examples of alerts users can set up and the benefits they provide.

Consumers can choose to get notified days or weeks before their monthly credit card bill is due. An alert like this helps cardholders manage their monthly budgets and stay on top of payments to avoid late fees. Cardholders can also set up alerts for missed payments, just in case they didn’t pay their monthly balance on time. Additionally, users who have set up automatic payments for their account can be notified when their payment has been processed.  

In addition to staying on top of monthly payments, cardholders also need to be conscious about their account’s credit (or spending) limit.  Alerts can be set to notify cardholders when their account balance gets too close to the limit. These alerts prevent people from having transactions declined due to exceeding their available credit. In addition, getting too close to the limit raises the cardholder’s credit utilization ratio and can negatively impact their credit score.

Perhaps the most important reason for setting credit card alerts is to prevent and detect fraud. Cardholders can do this in a few ways, including setting a minimum transaction amount alert, which will notify them when any transaction exceeds said amount. This type of alert is useful if someone’s credit card account was hacked, and a large transaction was made that would otherwise go undetected. Another type of fraud alert, typically determined by the card issuer, is for any suspicious activity on the account, which can include transactions from a foreign location. 

Keeping track of all credit card activity is stressful, but it doesn’t have to be. Stay alert with the best credit card notifications to monitor payments, credit balance and possible fraud. If you’re interested in a card with alert features, use Fiona to get matched with personalized offers that meet your needs.