Consumer Reports rates five largest Visa and Mastercard issuers mediocre in latest credit card ratings (Chatham Journal Weekly)

Yonkers, NY — The nation’s five largest MasterCard and Visa issuers — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Capital One, and HSBC, which control about 80 percent of the market — earned so-so scores in Consumer Reports’ latest ratings of credit cards . The survey, conducted by Consumer Reports National Research Center, covered 36,298 reader’s experiences with 61,944 cards.

More CR readers who used those banks’ cards complained that they were assessed unfair late fees or experienced unexpected interest-rate increases than readers who held cards from the top-rated issuers. It found that consumers had far fewer billing headaches and other problems with the card issuers at the top of the ratings.

The card issuers that scored especially high in the ratings – USAA Federal Savings (limited to members of the military, retired military personnel and their families), the Navy Federal Credit Union, and a group of other credit unions — also charged median interest rates between 9 and 11 percent, compared with the 17 percent imposed by the two issuers at the bottom of the ratings: Direct Merchants and Providian (now offered by Washington Mutual).

USAA Federal Savings, which issues American Express and MasterCard-branded cards, earned a reader score of 95 out of a possible 100. That’s one of the highest scores CR has seen in recent years. Reader scores ranged from USAA’s high of 95 points to Providian’s low of 61. A score of 100 means that all respondents were completely satisfied; 80 would mean very satisfied, on average; 60, fairly well satisfied.

Full text