August 26, 2008 By Liz Morris

Oil & gas company Chevron last week launched the Chevron and Texaco Visa Credit Card, with an improved gas rebate formula over previous offerings.

The Chevron and Texaco Visa offers 10 cents per gallon in fuel credits when the card is used for fuel purchases at Chevron and Texaco stations, 3% in fuel credits for non-fuel purchases at Chevron and Texaco, and 1% in fuel credits on purchases everywhere else. Chevron previously had offered credit cards with limited-time promotional rebates or no gas rebates at all; this new Visa card puts the company more in line with the offerings of many other major oil companies.

The Chevron and Texaco Visa is being issued in partnership with GE Money.

For more information or to apply for the Chevron and Texaco Visa, click here. If you’d like to compare this new card to other gas credit cards on the market, click here.

August 19, 2008 By Justin McHenry

Visa announced yesterday the launch of a pilot program for delivering real-time alerts to consumers based on triggers that may indicate when a credit card transaction is fraudulent. The alerts identifying potentially suspicious activity would be sent to consumers via e-mail or cell phone text messages.

Visa will be working with a number of major banks during the testing of the system, including PNC Bank, SunTrust Bank, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo in the United States, and Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank Financial Group, and Vancity in Canada. The test will include up to 2,000 total credit card customers who will receive the alerts.

The program would not alert a consumer after every credit card transaction, but only after those meeting certain criteria that might raise suspicion. Those criteria could include transactions that exceed an amount the card holder has chosen as a “trigger”, transactions from outside the customer’s home country, Internet or telephone transactions, or a cash withdrawal from an ATM machine.

Customers receiving an alert could then either verify the transaction in question or contact the bank to stop further transactions on the card.