We are all aware of postcodes however you may not be aware of the number of companies who classify you according to your postcode. Initially setup and used by the post office, many more companies now use postcodes as a way of classifying households.

The initial one or two letters in your postcode defines your postal area from 121 main sorting offices. The numbers in the initial part of the postcode then denotes the deliver office. The first number of the second part of the postcode define the postcode sector, of which there are around 10,000. The final two letters of your postcode breaks the address into a group of 1-99 properties. Each postcode on average will serve 15 addresses.  Read more... (545 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Many people now use their mobile phones to surf the internet therefore it is unsurprising that banks and building societies are now offering mobile phone services to complement customers’ bank accounts. However with many people worried about identity theft, just how safe are these mobile banking services?

MoneyTowers.com takes a look at the different mobile phone banking services on offer and explains how much risk is associated with each one.  Read more... (541 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

Chip and PIN cards were introduced in 2004 and were touted as being virtually infallible and therefore a way to cut the levels of debit card fraud significantly. Before chip and PIN, data on cards was stored on a magnetic strip on the back of the card which could easily be skimmed. With the advent of chip and PIN, a microchip is used to store data and this method is said to be much harder for the data to be skimmed as a four digit PIN is required for transactions.  Read more... (604 words, estimated 2:25 mins reading time)

Most people have seen them, the e-mail that purport to be from your bank, credit card company or well-known company which claims you need to log into a site in order to update their records for security reasons or a systems upgrade. Yet more often than not, the email is a scam, designed by criminals to get you to ‘login’ to their fake site (which often looks uncannily like the real thing) so that they can grab your details and use them for nefarious purposes.  Read more... (435 words, 1 image, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Recently, there has been much written in the papers about increasing levels of people being turned down for credit for a number of reasons, leading to confusion about credit ratings. So, here at MoneyTowers.com, we have put together a list of the top five facts and fictions about credit ratings.

Five Credit Rating Facts  Read more... (785 words, 2 images, estimated 3:08 mins reading time)

A landmark legal judgement earlier this month has ruled that consumers who buy goods or services abroad on their credit card that turn out to be faulty are entitled to a refund from their credit card company.

The House of Lords confirmed that Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act – which allows consumers who pay for defective goods on their credit card to claim redress from their credit card company – applies to goods and services bought overseas as well as those purchased in the UK. This means that if an overseas purchase of between £100 and £30,000 is made and the item is faulty or not delivered, consumers are able to make a claim from the supplier, or credit card company, or both.  Read more... (200 words, estimated 48 secs reading time)

Think offshore savings accounts and the super-wealthy normally springs to mind. However, offshore savings accounts are not just for those with huge pots of money – accounts are available for many Britons who live or work abroad.

What are offshore accounts?
Offshore savings accounts are most commonly held in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or Ireland. Many high street banks and building societies have subsidiaries that offer offshore accounts so consumers are able to pick names that they are familiar with. There are many private banks that also offer offshore account however many of these stipulate minimum opening balances, normally in the region of £5,000 to £10,000.  Read more... (492 words, estimated 1:58 mins reading time)