The CARD Act One Year Later: Is It Any Better for Consumers?

Today (Feb. 22) marks the first anniversary of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act. Passed in 2009 to protect American consumers from predatory credit card practices and enacted last year, this piece of federal legislation has proven to be something of a success, according to BillShrink, the money-saving search engine.

"At a certain level, the CARD Act achieved its high-level objectives," Schwark Satyavolu, BillShrink's CEO and co-founder, told WalletPop in a telephone interview. "Banks ran up rates to 30% in some cases beforehand, but after the act [passed], rates only moved 2% to 3%. It achieved its broad object of making rates more stable."