Marbles offers 4

Marbles offers 4.5 per cent on transferred balances for six months, before it rises to an easily beaten 15.9 per cent.Gomez, publishers of online guides, recently assessed 12 internet-issued credit cards It found the best three to be Cahoot, Smile and Egg. Cahoot was the cheapest; Smile the most convenient and Egg was best for internet transactions.Ed Bowie, a banking and credit card analyst with Gomez, says: “Which credit card a person chooses should really depend on how they intend to use it. The interest rate is the key if you want to use it as a line of credit. Cahoot is offering the market leading rate and offering five per cent cash-back on balance transfers.”For customers who want to manage their accounts through the internet and obtain some additional financial products, Smile came out top.

Here you have current accounts, savings accounts, personal loans from a single web site. They also have a high performance on customer service.” One of the factors focused on by Gomez was the speed and quality of responses to emailed queries. Smile – owned by The Co-operative Bank – consistently scored well with this.Mr Bowie warns those thinking of applying for an “internet credit card” to check whether the card they are looking at is what it claims to be. “A lot of companies offer what they claim are online credit cards, but you have to have a current account as well to view them online,” he says.Security has to be another concern when using the internet.

“Customers are very cautious of security and increasingly so,” says Mr Bowie. “We look for assurances that security levels will be maintained. We look for a guarantee that if a customer loses money through no fault of their own they will not lose out Some banks do that extremely well, others less so. With credit cards, any fraudulent use will be covered automatically, but we look for banks to spell this out. Smile does particularly well in that respect.”Consumers should watch out for likely interest rate hikes in the future, and be willing to continue to play the field to chase the lowest costs. “With firms like Cahoot, their interest rates are a giveaway,” says Mr Bowie. “I question how long they can sustain these.”Shoppers may also want the convenience of using their credit card on a shopping mall linked to their card’s web site – the real benefit of which is when the card issuer offers a discount.

Egg, for instance, will give you two per cent back on money you spend on its online sales market, or one per cent on other purchases. The Marbles credit card – issued by the HFC banking group – is linked on its web site to a shopping mall which provides, says HFC, discounts of up to 50 per cent off standard prices to users paying with Marbles.The Goldfish card, issued by the British Gas group of companies, doubles as a loyalty card for British Gas and the Automobile Association, with loyalty points which can be converted into vouchers and used at a range of top high street stores. The Boots Advantage credit card also doubles as a store loyalty card.One way or another, there are substantial savings to be made by choosing the right credit card, and many of the best of these now are ones based on the internet.. Whether you want to insure your car, home, dog, cat or parakeet, you can arrange cover online from the ever-expanding number of general insurance websites. Whether you want to insure your car, home, dog, cat or parakeet, you can arrange cover online from the ever-expanding number of general insurance websites.
Confidence in onlinee purchasing of financial services is growing steadily, according to Mori research which was commissioned by the general insurance website Screentrade.co.uk and which will be published next week. It reveals that 2.3 million people are now buying financial products onlinee, an increase of 18 per cent in the last six months.More than seven million people are now using the web to manage their money. Motor insurance is the most popular overall insurance product, with one in five surfers seeking quotes onlinee.Travel insurance is also a favourite, says Paul Charles, editor-in-chief at Screentrade, with a growing number of people sufficiently confident about onlinee purchasing to buy cover for their Easter and summer holidays.Trust in the security offered by onlinee shopping is also growing, Mr Charles says, with the survey showing that just one per cent of users suffered credit card fraud.

He believes this number is encouragingly low – but others may find a one in 100 chance of falling victim to fraud chancy.Not all news in the survey is good. Although more than half of the users faced no problems buying services onlinee, one in five found the internet very slow or suffered technical problems. A similar number said their site had crashed before they had completed their transaction – an experience most onlinee users will be familiar with.Mr Charles says the survey also shows that surfers are increasingly adept at shopping for the best deal. Of those buying motor insurance onlinee, more than one in three people visits five or more different websites in their search.Motor insurance is now sold onlinee by an increasing number of broker sites including AA Insurance, Auto Direct, 1stquote, Elephant and Screentrade, which allows you to compare quotes without having to brave a series of call centres.”Telephoning three or four insurance companies direct to get competitive quotes can be a slow and frustrating process.