website as tool for compare credit card offers

Website as Tool for Compare Credit Card Offers

MIRELA-CATRINEL VOICU, IZABELA ROTARU

Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

West University of Timisoara

ROMANIA

[email protected], [email protected], http://www.feaa.uvt.ro

Abstract: - In this paper we propose a website model which can be used when someone wants to choose a credit

card in Romania. In our study we consider the shopping cards for natural entities. Firstly, we present the

website data, which refers to: banks, credit cards, clients, documents, charges, commissions, interests,

incentives and benefits, partners etc. Our website model contains two parts of information: one part on banks

and their credit card offers and a second part on tools used in order to compare the credit cards. The last part

helps the client to choose the credit card which corresponds to his preferences. Also, the website can be used as

an advertising tool for banks.

Key-Words: - Website, Database, Credit Cards, Java, SQL Server, Financial Education.

1 Introduction Denisa Mateescu – General Manager Romania,

MasterCard Europe - speaks on the necessity of

financial education and also suggests the website

www.EduCard.ro (see also [1] page 24). Many

banks display their offers providing information on

credit cards, but unfortunately the way of

presentation is different from a bank to another.

Additionally, some of them don’t provide complete

information on offers. In this last case, the client can

find on the bank website a message like “for more

information on credit card send us a message at the

e-mail address…”. This way of general presentation

allows us to have an image on certain credit cards,

but is difficult to compare different offers.

Even if credit cards have many common features,

they also have some differences. In this paper we

want to build a websites model for offer

comparison, which helps the client to choose the

best card according with his preferences. For this

reason, firstly we present the most important

information on offers. Here, we use the information

from the websites of different Romanian banks. Our

website model allows us to find the offers of each

bank from the database and also to detect offers

according with some criteria.

2 Data presentation In this section we will present the website database

data. Basically information on banks includes:

bank name, address, phone, fax, email and website.

Basically information on cards includes: card

bank, card name, currency (RON, EUR or USD),

logo (Visa, MasterCard or American Express),

website, if it is co-branded (with yes or no value),

etc.

We can consider the following card features:

chip, magnetic strip, embossed, international, etc.

Other data on credit cards refers to information

as the following: standard credit limit (this value

represents the general credit limit), superior credit

limit(under certain conditions, the credit limit can be

greater than the standard limit credit and this field

provide this new maximum limit), number of net

monthly salaries(the limit credit depends on the

client salary – in this field we store the number of

salaries considered to provide the client limit credit),

grace period (generally this value is between 45 and

61), daily limits domestic cash advance, daily limits

international cash advance, minimum monthly

payment amount, due date(for example, the fourth

day of every month), observations on due date (in

some cases, the due date is obtained by adding a fix

number of days to the date of account statement

issuance), validity(the number of years for which the

credit card is valid), if there is an internet banking

service, number of maximum supplementary cards

(for the same account, the client can obtain a

different number of supplementary cards – for

children, wife/husband, etc.), minimum age for

supplementary card (generally, this minimum is 14

or 18), maximum age for supplementary card

(generally, this value refer to retired persons),

minimum money deposit for account opening (the

minimum amount of money when you open an

account), daily limits cash withdrawals in Romania,

daily limits cash withdrawals abroad, daily limits

sales and daily limit internet payments, etc.

Recent Researches in Communications, Signals and Information Technology

ISBN: 978-1-61804-081-7 96

The limits presented above may help the client in

case of fraud. However, if you want to use large

amounts, e.g. flight tickets plus holiday

accommodation for the whole family, these limits

can present a problem. For this reason, when the

client chooses a credit card, he must know all these

data and the generally future using of the card.

In order to obtain a credit card, the client must

satisfy some conditions, as followings: client age,

net income and some observations on the net income

(it is specified if the demanded minimum income

corresponds for employees, retired, professionals or

private undertakers), employed period, the residence

in Romania (different banks impose it) etc.

In order to obtain a credit card, the client must

provide different documents. The document list

includes the following information: application

form, contract, photo, copy of identity card, home

acts, invoice of utilities registered on home address,

documents proving income, etc. In our website

model, the credit card presentation must include the

information on these documents.

In the website model, each credit card has

associated a lot of fees, commissions and interests,

as followings: issuing fee, annual commission for

card management, cash withdrawal from bank

ATMs percent, cash withdrawal from banks ATMs

fix value, cash withdrawal from other banks ATMs

percent, cash withdrawal from other banks ATMs

fix value, cash advance at bank counter percent,

cash advance at bank counter fix value, cash

withdrawal from ATM - international transactions

percent, cash withdrawal from ATM - international

transactions fix value, transfer from card account

to another bank account, foreign exchange,

supplementary card issuing fee, emergency card

replacement, bank ATM balance inquiry, new pin

generation, pin change at bank ATMs, chargeback

requests not sustained, duplicates or copy for

current month, duplicates for previous

months(statement/month), over limit fee, card

reporting (lost/stolen/destroyed), emergency cash

advance, emergency card replacement,

information, monthly fee for, alert (smse-mail),

daily limits internet sales, interest rate for positive

balance, interest for credit facility, overdue interest

rate for credit limit, overdue interest rate (in case

of partial repayment and cash withdrawal), overdue

interest rate for cash withdrawal (more than the

limit credit).

Many banks associate with the credit cards

different incentives and benefits - such as travel

insurance, life insurance, credit insurance, utility

payment, etc.

In the case of many cards, banks have partners

from different activity areas.

We save all presented information in tables from

the website database and we explore them inside the

website.

3 Website with credit card offer 3.1 Website presentation

In the Figure 1, we present all the banks (from

our database) which have credit card offers. We

can view the bank name and its website address.

Figure 1: Selecting banks

Figure 2: Credit card offers

For the selected banks, in Figure 2 we can

view the credit cards offers. With a click on the

corresponding “...” button from Figure 2, in

Figure 3 we can view all data on the selected

card, using the database which contains the

information presented in the previous section.

The website has a dynamical content. In

Figure 1 we find all banks from the database.

This means that if we add a bank in database, in

the website we can view its data.


ISBN: 978-1-61804-081-7 97

Figure 3: Information on the selected credit

card

Also, if we delete a bank from the database,

its name will not be displayed on the website.

The entire website implementation refers only

dynamical pages and has a complex code.

In Figure 2, with a click on the select card

using criteria button we provide a set of criteria

for credit cards (see Figure 4). For example, in

case of grace period, the clients have

preferences. A card can have many interesting

features for the client, but for example, if the

daily limit for internet sales is a small value and

the client is focused on internet payments with

significant money values (e.g. fly, hotel

booking, etc), this feature removes the credit

card from the list of preferences. In our website

model, the client can also select his preferences

for these features and for all the others

presented in the previous section. In order to

have an idea on the possibilities of criteria

specification, see also the famous websites like

www.booking.com and www.emag.ro.

Figure 4: Example of controls used in order to specify preferences on credit cards

For the specification of the client

preferences, we use different html controls (see

Figure 4 for examples). After criteria

specification, the credit card offers are

presented like in Figure 2 and selecting a credit

card offer we can view its associated data as in

Figure 3.

When we specify all card preferences like in

Figure 4 (here we find presented only some

examples), in order to obtain the offer results as

in Figure 2, the applications uses a general

SQL statement as the following: “SELECT

fields FROM tables WHERE

where_expressions”. We can observe that our

database has many fields which can be used to

formulate conditions on credit cards like in

Figure4. This means that for our SQL statement,

in the where_expressions, we can have very

complicated expressions. This problem has

implementation solutions in any situation and a

general algorithm is presented in [7]. A

particular case on a similar problem was

presented in [6]. The general idea of this

algorithm is the transforming (by the program)

of the where_expressions in a simple

conditions, using relational algebra tools.

3.2. Source code presentation In order to have an idea on implementation, now, we

provide the code for pages presented in Figure 1.

In Figure 1 we have a jsp file which contains the

title and a frame in which we display the banks from

database. In this frame we use a servlet.

<%@page contentType="text/html"

pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD

HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type"

content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <title>Credit

card offers</title></head>

// The JavaScript function used at the submit button.

<body><table><tr><td>

// The title

<center><font color=black size="12"

face="Blackadder ITC"> <b>C R E D I T C A R D

S</b></font></center><form name="form1"


ISBN: 978-1-61804-081-7 98

action=" http://localhost:8080/CreditCards/offers "

method=post > <BR><center> <input

type="submit" value="View

data"></center></form></td></tr><tr><td> <iframe

width="900" height="2000"

name=frame1></</iframe></td</tr></table></body

>

</html>

We use a servlet which contains functions on the

header and the footer of website pages and data on

database (url, user and password):

public class Servlet1 extends HttpServlet {

protected String user = ""; protected String

password = "";

protected String dbURL = "jdbc:odbc:bank";

protected Statement s;

protected void db_statement(){

try {

Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver

");

Connection c = DriverManager.getConnection

(dbURL, user, password);

s = c.createStatement();

}catch (ClassNotFoundException a) {}}

public void header(String title, PrintWriter out)

throws IOException{

out.println("<html><head><title>"+title+"</title></

head>");}

public void footer(PrintWriter out) throws

IOException{

out.println("</body></html>");}}

In order to display the banks in Figure 1, in a

servlet, we use the following function:

protected void processRequest(HttpServletRequest

request, HttpServletResponse response) throws

ServletException, IOException {

response.setContentType("text/html;charset=UTF-

8");

PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();

try {

// The header function is defined in Servlet1.

header("Credit cards",out);

out.println("<body><form name=\"form1\"

action=\" http://localhost:8080/CreditCards/banks\

\" method=post >");out.println("<table><tr><td

valign=\"top\"><table><tr><td "+

"valign=\"top\">");

String sql_statement="", bank="", wb=""; int i=0;

// We select all banks from database

sql_statement="select Bank, website from Banks";

try {

// The function db_statement() was defined in

Servlet1 servlet

db_statement();

ResultSet r = s.executeQuery(sql_statement); while (r.next()) {

bank=r.getString(1);wb=r.getString(2); i++;

//For each bank we have a corresponding check box

component /

out.println("<input type=\"checkbox\" value="+

bank+" name=r" +i+" > <font size=4 color=black>

<b>"+bank+" "+wb+ "</b></font> <br>");

} r.close();s.close();}catch (SQLException a) {}

// The submit buttons “ok” from Figure 1

out.println("</td></tr><tr><td valign=\"top\"><Br>

<input type= "+ \"submit\" value=\"OK\"> <iframe

name=frame width=\"700\" height=\"1800\"> "+ "

</iframe></td></tr> </table></form> ");

// The footer function is defined in Servlet1.

footer(out);} finally { out.close();}}

In Figure 1 we select the banks for which we

want to view the offers. These offers are presented

in Figure 2 and we use (in a servlet) the following

function:

protected void processRequest(HttpServletRequest

request, HttpServletResponse response) throws

ServletException, IOException {

response.setContentType("text/html;charset=UTF-

8");

PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();

try {

// The header function is defined in Servlet1.

header("Credit cards",out);

// The JavaScript function used at the submit buttons

“…” from Figure 2

out.println(" <Script

Language=\"JavaScript\">function

ok(){document.form2.action="+

"\http://localhost:"8080/CreditCards/offers\";}</Scri

pt><body>form name=\"form2\" "+ "action=\" \"

method=post> ");String sql_statement=""; int

no_banks=0;

//We calculate the number of banks from our

database

sql_statement="select count(*) from banks";

try {


ISBN: 978-1-61804-081-7 99

// The function db_statement() was defined in

Servlet1 servlet

db_statement(); ResultSet r = s.executeQuery( sql_statement);

while (r.next()) {

no_banks=r.getInt(1);

}r.close();r.close(); } catch catch (SQLException

a) {}

String t=""; String g="";int i=0;int ID_button=0;

/* In the case of each selected bank (see Figure 2),

we will provide the corresponding offers */

for(i=0;i<=no_banks;i++){ t=

request.getParameter("r"+String.valueOf(i));

// We test if a certain bank was selected

if(t!=null){int id_bank=0;

// For a selected bank, we detect its ID

sql_statement="select Id_bank from banks where

bank='"+t.trim()+"'";

try {


while (r.next()) {

id_bank=r.getInt(1);

}r.close();s.close(); }

catch (SQLException a) {}

/* For a selected bank, we create a table with the

corresponding offers*/

out.println("<table

border=1><tr><td>"+t.trim()+"</dt></tr>");

sql_statement="SELECT ID_card, name FROM

cards where id_bank="+ String.valueOf(id_bank);

String ID_field="", String name=""; int j=0;

try {


// The table rows with information on offers

while (r.next()) {

j++;ID_button++;ID_field=r.getString(1);name=r.ge

tString(2);

out.println("<tr><td><input type=\"hidden\"

value="+ID_field+" name=it "+ ID_button+ "

></td>");

// The offer names

out.println("<td><font

color=black>"+name+"</font><input "+

"type=\"hidden\" value="+name+" name=if

"+ID_button+"></td>");

/* In the case of each offer, in order to display the

information presented in Figures 2, we use a submit

button*/

out.println("<td><input type=\"submit\" name=b

"+ID_button+" value=\"...\" onclick= "+

"\"ok()\"></td>");

}r.close(); s.close();}

catch (SQLException a) {}

out.println("</table>");}}

// Here we save the numbers of “…” buttons

out.println("<br><input type=\"hidden\"

value="+ID_button+ name=\"h\"></td></form>");

footer(out);} finally { out.close();}}

4 Conclusion Using websites for comparing banking

product offers, we can help the client to find the

best offers according with his criteria. But also,

this is an advertising tool for banks. Our study

was focused on credit cards, but it can be used

for any others banking products and it isn’t

limited on banking products. Starting from the

idea of financial education, presented in the

start of Introduction, with our website model,

the bank clients can learn more on credit card

choosing. In a very short time, they can become

experts in the choosing of banking products.

References:

[1] Bancpost – Banking cards. The user guide

– Finmedia, Aprilie 2010,București. [2] Ceballos Sierra, Fco. Javier – Java 2 – Ra-Ma

Publisher, Madrid, 2008

[3] Charlesworth, A., Gay, R., Esen R. -Marketing

on-line – Ed. ALL, București 2009

[4] Chopra Vivek, Sing Li, Jeff Genender – Apache

Tomcat 6– Anaya Multimedia Publisher, 2008,

Madrid

[5] Odobescu, E. – Modern banking marketing –

Ed.Sigma, București 2007

[6] Voicu M.C., Pirtea M., Varga R. I. - Website

about Summer Offers at the Romanian Black

Sea Resorts - 3rd WSEAS International

Conference on Cultural Heritage and Tourism

(CUHT'10), Corfu Island, Greece July 22-24,

2010, p.58-62

[7] Voicu M C - Relational Algebra Applications

in Web Programming - The 16th WSEAS

International Conference on APPLIED

MATHEMATICS (AMATH '11), Montreux,

sSwitzerland December 29-31, 2011


ISBN: 978-1-61804-081-7 100

website as tool for compare credit card offers

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