And once established, fees have a way of growing exponentially. Not everybody is easily victimized. Those with abundant financial resources usually have the cash flow to pay off and cancel any credit card when fees or interest rates become onerous. It's the financially vulnerable and youngest consumers who suffer the most. The high rates, combined with low required minimum monthly payments, mean that some people will be paying off debts for years.
Payments never seem to bring down the balance.
College students are also among the victims, eager to spend but not cognizant of the implications of the fine print. Abuses, though, have grown so commonplace that some universities have banned card solicitations on campus. The feverish competition has expanded to high schools, where web mavens are urged to get the Cybermoola card, a prepaid virtual credit card strictly for Internet purchases. The economics of the credit card business is replete with irony. So banks play a complicated game of trying to extract maximum income from consumers without pushing them to the point of no return.