Since the global credit crunch made its way to the UK all financial industry sectors have been affected, and all have tightened up their lending criteria as a result of this. Like other types of lenders, many credit card firms are increasingly cautious over handing out credit, particularly to those that could be considered a higher than average risk in terms of falling behind with repayments and adding to the lender’s bad debt levels.

At the end of the first quarter of this year a report showed that credit card rejection levels had soared, with around three million credit card applications having been turned down in the previous six months, which is around the time when the global credit crunch started to wreak havoc in the UK’s money markets. Lenders began to tighten up on their lending criteria and started to reserve their best rates for those with decent creditor histories and ratings, reducing the chances of anyone with a less than perfect credit history of getting finance via a credit card.

The three million rejections over the six months period between last October and this March equated to around 15,555 rejections on credit card applications each day, according to industry officials. This affected many people, from those desperate to get credit in order to cope financially to those that wanted to keep switching cards on a regular basis in order to try and avoid paying interest on their borrowing – often known as rate tarts.

When the figures were released in March one industry official said: ‘Credit card companies have been badly burnt with bad debts and are putting the shutters up in response by turning down more and more applications. Anyone with debt problems who is hoping for an easy way out by taking out another credit card is liable to find that they’ll be turned down.’

He added: ‘It is entirely sensible for credit card companies to reject applications from people with debt problems or who look as if they have already borrowed enough. Rising interest rates mean it is harder to service debts and people should not be encouraged to get deeper in debt.’

However, this rise in credit card rejections also fuelled a different problem – the fact that many people have turned to lying and providing false information on their applications in order to increase their chances of getting a credit card. The fraud prevention service CIFAS recently described the level of applications on which lies and false information had been provided as worrying. Often people lie about things such as their credit history or debt levels in order to try and boost their chances of success, and some also lie about things such as their income, employment history, and even their address if there is any connection with bad credit.

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