"Parents think card companies are irresponsible ... and they don't want their children to have a bad credit record, so they pay the bill."
A single payment missed will place a black mark on a student's credit record for five years, according to a Chinatrust Commercial Bank (
The surging number of complaints from parents has spurred the bureau to "request the Banker's Association (銀行公會) to self-regulate its behavior and limit the number of promotions targeting students," Huang said. The association is the official bridge to all of Taiwan's banks, public and private.
But banks such as Chinatrust -- the largest issuer of credit cards in Taiwan -- don't appear to be heeding the appeal.
At present, Chinatrust has deals with nine schools to issue cards branded with the university name. And the schools -- keen to beef-up university coffers -- are all too ready to encourage the use of their university-branded cards on campus.
For example, Taiwan's top university -- National Taiwan University -- promotes the cards to all its students and skims a sweet 1.5 percent of total sales from the Chinatrust deal, according to a former university official.
Multiply that number by China-trust's 90,000 student cards in circulation and the attraction becomes obvious.
And for those students who failed to do their homework and read the fine print of the card's minimum payment agreement, Chinatrust passes out the lesson university educators have yet to teach -- financial responsibility.
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