Credit Cards Come to the Convenience Store

Oxxo is about the largest chain of convenience stores in Mexico. It's large by any standard, there seems to be one in every block, in every neighborhood.

This week, I noticed that they started accepting Visa and Mastercard.

The thing is, if you make lots of purchases of less than 100 pesos, you end up with a pocketful of change 4 or 5 times the weight of US coins. There's so much, it's hard to get rid of.

Being able to use a credit card will protect my pockets from wearing out too soon.

Update on New Credit Card Trick

Well, it wasn't a trick. It was just the "Skip a Payment" option.
It's there on the statement, but you have to look hard to find it.
That's a point that was missed in the new law.
That all terms, conditions should be highlighted when they are not part of routine account handling.

I'm not all that happy with the new credit card law because I'm probably going to end up a loser with higher interest rates and a shorter grace period. We'll see.

New Credit Card Trick? ? ? ?

My Chase credit card statement date is the 22nd of the month. The online statement appears long before the printed one arrives in the mail usually the 24th, that's today. I logged in and there it was. Balance around $400 as I expected. Minimum payment was $0? Huh? Can't be! Or, is this a new trick by the credit card companies to lull people into not making a payment and paying interest on amounts they could easily avoid?

Could be it was only a software error and will be corrected. I'll find out.