By Gareth Vaughan
Consumer lender GE Money New Zealand says it's on track to launch its own credit card this year and a "fantastic" partnership with jeweler Michael Hill International has been well received by its customers.
GE Money New Zealand managing director Aaron Baxter told interest.co.nz that the finance company was in the process of finalising details around its credit card launch and was looking to get the card up and running by the end of the year.
"We don't want to rush this, as we want this to be a credit card that our customers will be happy with and that brings innovation and uniqueness to the New Zealand credit card space," Baxter said.
Baxter, who told interest.co.nz last September that GE Money was eyeing opportunities in the manufacturing of financial services around the grocery and jewelry markets, said the company had launched a relationship with Michael Hill last October.
"Our CreditLine facility has been rolled out to the entire Michael Hill network and has been very well received by our (customer) database as they can now enjoy the benefits of interest free terms for big ticket jewellery items," Baxter said.
He described the partnership with Michael Hill as "fantastic."
"Our expertise is finance and their expertise is distribution and retail, so this is very much a mutually beneficial alliance for both sides. We are also looking at different segments of the market that we can work with, in particular in the leisure, lifestyle and home improvement areas," Baxter added.
Baxter, an Australian who has been with GE since 1998, took the reins at GE Money NZ in April last year. He said the firm currently is also in talks with "a number" of potential new key partners to add to what it views as its four key strategic partners – Harvey Norman, Noel Leeming, Trade Me and Kiwibank. However, he wasn't yet prepared to disclose who they were.
GE says its finance services in NZ include personal loans, insurance and interest-free and promotional retail finance.
GE Money NZ has about 500,000 customers, and is part of US conglomerate General Electric (GE), which produces everything from jet engines to nuclear power generators, financial services, water processing, healthcare and TV programming and has an AA+ credit rating.
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6 Comments
"We don't want to rush this, as we want this to be a credit card that our customers will be happy with and that brings innovation and uniqueness to the New Zealand credit card space," Baxter said.
Duh who does he think he's kidding - it'll be made of plastic, it'll be loaded with a credit limit most people shouldn't be given, it'll charge you a fee for having it, it'll charge you an even bigger fee for not paying it off on time, it'll send more dollars overseas to foreign HQ's and it'll help people buy even more crap they don't need. Yeah to GE
Having credit card does'nt mean you will buy everything you wanted to even it's unnecesary at all. You should have control over your expenses because if you don't and you're already dependent on your credit cards which leads you to non payable debts, it would be a very nig problem for you. So if you think you're already addicted to credit cards, here are some ideas for tips on how to stop the cycle of charge card dependency. Afterwards, you might want to help pay off the credit you have out at this time.
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