Citi Jacks Up Card Rates on Millions of Accounts

As many Citigroup customers are already painfully aware, the lender has drastically increased rates on some 15 million credit card accounts, the Financial Times reports. Holders of Citi cards co-branded with retailers such as Sears saw their interest rates climb by as much as 24%—or 3 percentage points—between January and April if they failed to pay off their full balance each month.

“It’s hard to tell if rate hikes on existing balances being put in place now are the result of prior bad business decisions or getting in under the wire of the new law,” says the Democratic rep from New York who authored upcoming legislation that makes such practices illegal.
(More Citigroup stories.)