PRE-APPROVED CREDIT CARDS

Pre-approved cards are the result of one bank who now has you as a customer, 
and sells your name to another bank or a series of banks so they can offer 
you their credit cards. Here's how it usually works:

Many smaller banks want to be credit card issuers but, because of limited 
facilities for credit card processing, it is sometimes difficult for a 
smaller bank to cash in on the credit card boom. What's been developed is 
an interconnect system where large banks will process credit card 
applications and issue the credit cards for the little banks.

For example, let's say that Mini Savings & Loan wants to get in on the 
Plastic Pursuit. However, Mini does not have the facility or the staff to 
process credit card applications and issue credit cards. What Mini has to 
do is contract the service with Maxi Bank.

Since Maxi has several banks that they provide this service to, Mini Savings 
& Loan is just a welcome addition to their roster of client banks for whom 
they process and issue credit cards.

When you apply for a credit card at Mini Savings & Loan, your application 
is actually forwarded to Maxim Bank who runs a credit check and, granting 
you have good credit, issues you your choice of VISA or MasterCard with 
Mini Savings & Loan's name on it.

However, since Maxi is the issuing bank and since it has your credit on 
their file, they can very well send you an application for their own credit 
card. They can also sell your name to their other client-banks who can offer 
you their credit cards on a pre-approved basis.

Another source that sells your name is the credit bureau. Because they can 
program their computers to search for names of existing credit card holders 
with clean and healthy files, they can provide issuing banks with a premium 
mailing list of people to whom the banks can send pre-approved credit card 
applications.