Replacement Credit Card

It is part of a normal banking process to send a replacement credit card right before an existing card is expired. Sometimes, we also get a new credit card to replace an existing credit card which is not expiring any time soon. This could happen due to many reasons such as bank mergers, processing errors or a marketing gimmick to get us dust off the old and unused credit card and talk to an account rep who offers additional service and promotion offerings to get us start using their credit card again.

From a risk standpoint, the way we must deal with the new card is the same whether our existing credit card is soon expiring or not. What I mean is that once we get a replacement card, we should call to activate the card and discard the old one whether the old card is going to expire soon or much later. However, if the old credit card has not been used for a while and you are reminded of its existence when you get the replacement card, it is a good practice to asses whether you really need to keep that card. This is stressed in my Identity KAOS principles which states you must continuously assess your identity components and decide whether you are willing to accept the additional identity theft risks of owning and managing another credit card, bank account, or online account.

The fact that credit cards have an expiration date is a very good thing. Not only when the credit cards expire, unknown and unauthorized use of that credit card automatically ends, but in this case, a replacement credit card is a potential reminder of our unused credit cards that we should assess and decide whether we want to keep them or not.

Owning too many credit cards without the appropriate assessment of our needs and the card benefits is not a good thing. We all have varying levels of credit needs, personal preferences, and risk tolerance. Depending on our assessment results of the above mentioned factors, we can decide to have more than one credit card that collectively provide a certain credit limit and benefits such as lower interest rates and rebates that correspond to the results of our assessments.

Learn more about credit cards risks after reading "replacement credit card".