Toto, I don't think we're in China anymore - US companies adopting social credit score system

[leadeater]

46 minutes ago, Mihle said:

In US. Multiple of those things does not affect it in my country. And some other European countries don't even have it at all.

The whole credit economy is just annoying, so much money and earnings (our time) is evaporated by interest and fees and the people hurt most by it have the least. Debt spiral, a near impossible thing to get out of.

 

I've never owned a credit card, I have a Visa Debt card so I can actually do online purchases etc but I'll decline or cut any credit cards given to me. Home loan is the only debt I've been unable to avoid, I have gotten things in the past on store cards interest free and then paid them off very quickly out of impatience but at least they never get anything extra out of me.

[mr moose]

13 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The whole credit economy is just annoying, so much money and earnings (our time) is evaporated by interest and fees and the people hurt most buy it have the least. Debt spiral, a near impossible thing to get out of.

 

I've never owned a credit card, I have a Visa Debt card so I can actually do online purchases etc but I'll decline or cut any credit cards given to me. Home loan is the only debt I've been unable to avoid, I have gotten things in the past on store cards interest free and then paid them off very quickly out of impatience but at least they never get anything extra out of me.

I don't have a CC either.  I burnt it years ago when I finally got rich enough not to need one.    The funny thing is I remember being told way back in the 80's that only the rich can afford to be poor.  It seems to have held true all this time.

 

 

[kokakolia]

35 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The whole credit economy is just annoying, so much money and earnings (our time) is evaporated by interest and fees and the people hurt most by it have the least. Debt spiral, a near impossible thing to get out of.

I mean, this video sums it up: 

 

The thing about credit cards is that they can earn you money with signup deals and cash back rewards. I mean, more so in the USA than Canada. Canada has some of the lousiest credit cards with annual fees and pathetic points rewards. Because if you spend $20000 on stuff in a year, congrats! You can get a $350 stand mixer for free. What a deal! Just make sure you always pay the card off on time. That said, credit cards are an encouragement to buy more stuff with built-in rewards and special offers. But you can be smart about this by focusing your credit card purchases on necessities like gas or food. 

 

Oh! And if you really want to feel depressed about how poor people are exploited, watch this: 

 

 

[leadeater]

54 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

The thing about credit cards is that they can earn you money with signup deals and cash back rewards. I mean, more so in the USA than Canada. Canada has some of the lousiest credit cards with annual fees and pathetic points rewards

No rewards are free, especially when it comes to credit cards. You pay for them through the fee to have the card and any interest incurred if you do not pay off the full balance every month. If you can find a temporary situation where you do win sure take it, in the wider sense credit cards are cancer and cost you more. 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

No rewards are free, especially when it comes to credit cards. You pay for them through the fee to have the card and any interest incurred if you do not pay off the full balance every month. If you can find a temporary situation where you do win sure take it, in the wider sense credit cards are cancer and cost you more. 

Credits card with rewards are like pokey machines, for every one who walks out wining a few thousand $$,  there are a few thousand who just walk out poorer.

[Trik'Stari]

22 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Every business is designed that way, they are trying to make sure you keep on spending money.... (What do you think why subscription based models getting more and more "popular"?)

And you continuously get less and less for your money.

 

Both of those things together, are unsustainable.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, leadeater said:

No rewards are free, especially when it comes to credit cards. You pay for them through the fee to have the card and any interest incurred if you do not pay off the full balance every month. If you can find a temporary situation where you do win sure take it, in the wider sense credit cards are cancer and cost you more. 

My AirPoints say otherwise. I make more than the money back in the Koru Club. 

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, floofer said:

My AirPoints say otherwise. I make more than the money back in the Koru Club. 

And if you rarely fly or is company paid for? There's no such thing as free money. Always remember that, just like money doesn't grow on trees.

[Guest]

Just now, leadeater said:

And if you rarely fly or is company paid for? There's no such thing as free money. Always remember that, just like money doesn't grow on trees.

It gets balanced out. Its a ritual when I fly home of having 5-7 plates of food, about 4 beers and downloading (Netflix) as much as I can for free over 3 hours. Considering I'm back and forth about 8-10 times a year, it works out to be around $70 a visit, so I'd say its even. 

 

Money doesn't grow on trees, but you can be sure I'm getting its worth. 

[leadeater]

Just now, floofer said:

It gets balanced out. Its a ritual when I fly home of having 5-7 plates of food, about 4 beers and downloading (Netflix) as much as I can for free over 3 hours. Considering I'm back and forth about 8-10 times a year, it works out to be around $70 a visit, so I'd say its even. 

 

Money doesn't grow on trees, but you can be sure I'm getting its worth. 

Still comes under the find a situation that works for you though, as I said in the wider scheme credit cards take money not give it. No bank is going to create a system that loses them money, ever. If it does it'll be axed.

[kokakolia]

26 minutes ago, leadeater said:

No rewards are free, especially when it comes to credit cards. You pay for them through the fee to have the card and any interest incurred if you do not pay off the full balance every month. If you can find a temporary situation where you do win sure take it, in the wider sense credit cards are cancer and cost you more. 

In Canada, just looking at RBC you can get a no fee credit card with 2% cashback on groceries and 20% interest rate.

Spoiler

https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/credit-cards/all-credit-cards.html#/no-fee

That's very lackluster by credit card standards, but you get the picture. If you pay your credit card balance on time every month, you spend 2% less on groceries. The catch is that you have to be extremely careful with the credit card balance deadlines which aren't always on the last day of the month, and that will bite you in the butt more than once. I experienced this personally. 

 

IMHO, a better analogy for a a credit card would be a mouse trap with a tiny piece of cheese. You can easily disarm the trap and get the cheese. But it's hardly worth the risk of getting hurt. We're talking 2 pennies on the dollar, and on groceries only. If you spend $300/month on groceries that's $6. That's 1 pint of beer during happy hour, once a month. 

[leadeater]

Just now, kokakolia said:

If you pay your credit card balance on time every month, you spend 2% less on groceries. The catch is that you have to be extremely careful with the credit card balance deadlines which aren't always on the last day of the month, and that will bite you in the butt more than once. I experienced this personally. 

That's the core problem though and what a lot of people use to shuffle debt around inuring interest and other fees etc. When you don't have the money to pay for what you need you turn to debt, if you turn to debt you pay for debt making you more in debt. Debt spiral.

[Guest]

Just now, leadeater said:

Still comes under the find a situation that works for you though, as I said in the wider scheme credit cards take money not give it. No bank is going to create a system that loses them money, ever. If it does it'll be axed.

Definitely, and I think in this day and age, where you need a credit card (when I'm a bit older tbh, I just use debit) its more of choosing the one that gives you the most benefits, but at the end of it, its still interest charged on the card. 

[kokakolia]

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Still comes under the find a situation that works for you though, as I said in the wider scheme credit cards take money not give it. No bank is going to create a system that loses them money, ever. If it does it'll be axed.

The money you get from credit cards is more comparable to coupon deals. It's like a partnership between various businesses and the bank. For example, an Amazon gift card purchased with rewards will guarantee a purchase on Amazon. That's the pillar of a system that encourages people to consume more stuff and spend more money. And it's advantageous for the bank as it increases the number of transactions, thus increasing profit through transaction fees (paid by the card holder or the businesses). 

[leadeater]

25 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

(paid by the card holder or the businesses)

Hence takes money. The bank doesn't care about increasing sales for a business unless they profit from it, the business might care so might come to an agreement but they are still for profit so they make the money through other means also.

 

All debt arrangements come under the core principle of one party lending to another party on the commitment to pay back the loan plus a fee, be that interest or a fixed amount. Under the hood of every amazing deal, ad on tv, store card, reward system etc where a loan/debt is involved this is what is going on.

 

Purchase reward schemes are not like this, they don't involve debt. Problems do start to come in when you mix purchase reward systems with debt systems like credit cards or loan cards, if you just use your card more you earn points. Sounds great, you're still incurring debt and there is always a fee for debt, dig around long enough and you'll find it.

 

Wasn't that long ago, but still 10s of years, store reward cards were a thing and were not debt based, weren't tied in with a finance company and were administered by the business itself for itself. These died off in the debt/credit economy boom, or second wave of it not sure exactly what to call it but there was a big shift in how purchasing works in practice.

 

Now store cards are actually finance cards and can be used across many different stores, these became very popular through enticements and rewards however are still debt based and very profitable. The profits were so good in fact Visa and Master Card have been buying all these companies, now every store card is also a credit card.

 

I'm happy to use something that rewards me for my purchases and I benefit from it and the business benefits from me purchasing more or preference their business over another. These arrangements are mutually beneficial, these don't exit anymore (or extremely rare or limit to upper wealth sectors).

[Chett_Manly]

I wonder if only having a LinkedIn puts me in a better or worse position for this. On the one hand they cannot get any data from Facebook/Twitter, and might find that odd, on the other hand they get my work history which should be more than enough to evaluate if someone is going to pay back a debt.

[Unixsystem]

12 hours ago, leadeater said:

No rewards are free, especially when it comes to credit cards. You pay for them through the fee to have the card and any interest incurred if you do not pay off the full balance every month. If you can find a temporary situation where you do win sure take it, in the wider sense credit cards are cancer and cost you more. 

Most "beginner" credit cards have no fee, at least in the US. The rewards are significantly lower than those with a fee, but since there's no buy-in there's zero negative to using the cards versus cash/debit (that's ignoring the privacy argument, which is a whole separate can of worms).

 

The issue isn't credit or credit cards, it's the compete lack of education regarding what credit is and how it works. I took two semesters of economics in high school and at no point was a single bit of practical, real world information given about how to manage your own finances or how to handle credit.

 

I didn't get my first credit card until about 5 years ago, but despite that I've made somewhere around $1500 in various rewards without spending a dime on fees or interest and my credit score has increased by >100 points. Yes, the system assumes that a certain amount of people are going to screw around and carry a balance, but that doesn't mean the system is bad, it means the people are.

 

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of problems with the credit system as it exists today, but the fact that some people can't do their research and control their spending isn't one of them.

[Andreas Lilja]

15 hours ago, leadeater said:

The whole credit economy is just annoying, so much money and earnings (our time) is evaporated by interest and fees and the people hurt most by it have the least. Debt spiral, a near impossible thing to get out of.

The elites love credit, it lessens the impression that wages haven't been stagnating for decades.

 

 

[leadeater]

13 hours ago, Waffles13 said:

Yes, the system assumes that a certain amount of people are going to screw around and carry a balance, but that doesn't mean the system is bad, it means the people are.

The system is bad, it's designed for profit and exists because it makes a profit. You, singular case, might be benefiting from it but for every winner there is 1000 losing. If it's not making profit the banks wouldn't keep it, they aren't charities.

 

And it doesn't matter how much people say it's their own fault, banks, lenders, finance companies, the lot of them are predatory and go to great length to suck you in. I will not blame a person short on money, in a low paying job, lower education, for getting bested by a system designed not to benefit them and to take their money. That's like expecting a novice chess player to be able to best a grand master, ain't happening.

[Mihle]

On 6/15/2019 at 8:43 AM, leadeater said:

The whole credit economy is just annoying, so much money and earnings (our time) is evaporated by interest and fees and the people hurt most by it have the least. Debt spiral, a near impossible thing to get out of.

 

I've never owned a credit card, I have a Visa Debt card so I can actually do online purchases etc but I'll decline or cut any credit cards given to me. Home loan is the only debt I've been unable to avoid, I have gotten things in the past on store cards interest free and then paid them off very quickly out of impatience but at least they never get anything extra out of me.

True, I wont use credit cards myself.
Only single loan I will get is when I eventually move out, if I can, because its basically impossible not to without living without, or just a small rent with your parents for many years.

[kokakolia]

16 hours ago, Waffles13 said:

Most "beginner" credit cards have no fee, at least in the US. The rewards are significantly lower than those with a fee, but since there's no buy-in there's zero negative to using the cards versus cash/debit (that's ignoring the privacy argument, which is a whole separate can of worms).

 

The issue isn't credit or credit cards, it's the compete lack of education regarding what credit is and how it works. I took two semesters of economics in high school and at no point was a single bit of practical, real world information given about how to manage your own finances or how to handle credit.

 

I didn't get my first credit card until about 5 years ago, but despite that I've made somewhere around $1500 in various rewards without spending a dime on fees or interest and my credit score has increased by >100 points. Yes, the system assumes that a certain amount of people are going to screw around and carry a balance, but that doesn't mean the system is bad, it means the people are.

The more I read this, the more my blood boils thinking about my old RBC "signature" credit card. It's not like I didn't have enough money or I was lazy, but it was very hard to avoid credit charges. The app wan't all that clear with the balance, and there was like a 2~3 day delay to pay your balance. In retrospect, I should have never used my credit card on the last week of the month. And I got like $300 worth of free stuff every year in rewards. But the card cost me around $100/year in fees. And I was spending money like crazy. 

 

My point is: if the system was good then the banks would profit less from credit charges due to bizarre deadlines and payment delays that can last for days. I don't believe anyone who says that they don't pay charges on their credit cards. In that regard, I saw the app for the Apple credit card and it put RBC to shame. The app is super intuitive and tells you your balance exactly and what interest you'll pay and the deadline. I know it's absolutely crazy for a credit card app to do that. 

[Unixsystem]

4 hours ago, kokakolia said:

The more I read this, the more my blood boils thinking about my old RBC "signature" credit card. It's not like I didn't have enough money or I was lazy, but it was very hard to avoid credit charges. The app wan't all that clear with the balance, and there was like a 2~3 day delay to pay your balance. In retrospect, I should have never used my credit card on the last week of the month. And I got like $300 worth of free stuff every year in rewards. But the card cost me around $100/year in fees. And I was spending money like crazy. 

 

My point is: if the system was good then the banks would profit less from credit charges due to bizarre deadlines and payment delays that can last for days. I don't believe anyone who says that they don't pay charges on their credit cards. In that regard, I saw the app for the Apple credit card and it put RBC to shame. The app is super intuitive and tells you your balance exactly and what interest you'll pay and the deadline. I know it's absolutely crazy for a credit card app to do that. 

Make no mistake, I'm not saying that the credit card companies are good guys nor am I trying to imply that they don't fleece loads of cash out of people. All I'm saying is that the blame for being fleeced isn't on the companies, its on the people who use them without understanding them. Its like blaming a casino for taking your life savings; sure, they are preying on some negative aspects of the way the human brain works, but at the end of the day its not their fault that you didn't quit while you were ahead.

 

Every loan or credit card I've ever had has their policies laid out for you before you sign up. If someone can't be assed to read up then they probably shouldn't have a credit card.

 

Meanwhile I'll be over here collecting my free money. Genuinely never paid a cent - I don't get cards with fees, and I treat them like a bill that I pay down twice a month (once right before the statement to bring utilization down to <10%, then again right after the statement to clear the rest of the balance).

 

Spoiler

And just to reiterate something I said previously, I totally understand and respect people who oppose credit cards for privacy reasons, I only take issue with the idea that they are solely at fault for a person's lack of personal responsibility.

 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Waffles13 said:

Every loan or credit card I've ever had has their policies laid out for you before you sign up. If someone can't be assed to read up then they probably shouldn't have a credit card.

Reading them isn't really the issue, it's being able to understand them and also what is not explained like the fact interest and charges are applied before payments on loan/credit principal and that not being clearly shown on statements. So you pay the $300 balance, but you actually needed to pay $320 because transaction ordering, then you are hit with a fee and interest because you're not at a zero balance at the end of the statement period.

 

Then you have other situations like being unable to pay an unexpectedly higher bill or other such thing and you have little choices so you go in to debt, which increases expenditure, then are unable to pay that off because you had very little budge room left in the first place. There is a reason people at or below the poverty line distrust banks so much, finance companies even more, because they are almost always the ones that take them from being just above the line to below it.

 

Daily living by means of debt/credit is fundamentally a bad idea, that's not at all the purpose of it despite how it's treated today. Doing this puts you at risk, if something happens and you are unable to cover that risk you are in big trouble and quickly. Always treat debt as risk and have cover for it and don't rely on pay to pay to cover it because that does not actually cover risk. This is precisely why when you get a home loan you also get life insurance with trauma cover to cover the risk. The best risk is the one you don't have.

 

This advice was given to me by my Registered Financial Adviser, unlike regular 'Financial Advisers', these ones are legally required to give the client the best advice for their situation. Not all Financial Advisers are the same and not all of them are doing the best for you and what many do not know is they don't actually have to which is a shocking thing in itself. The name differs by country but don't be tricked by other similar words in front of their title, there's only one proper one and find out what that one is and only ever talk to them.

[Unixsystem]

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Reading them isn't really the issue, it's being able to understand them and also what is not explained like the fact interest and charges are applied before payments on loan/credit principal and that not being clearly shown on statements. So you pay the $300 balance, but you actually needed to pay $320 because transaction ordering, then you are hit with a fee and interest because you're not at a zero balance at the end of the statement period.

It's very possible that things are different based on country, but here in the US that is absolutely not true.

 

First of all, any sort of fees are based on what bank you get your card with. I can only speak for myself, but of the several cards I use none have any sort of transaction fee, and there's absolutely no fee for carrying a balance unless you don't pay the minimum, which is usually about ~$25 a month.

 

There's two separate things going on: one is that as far as credit cards are concerned, basically nothing that happens in between statements matters, only what your balance in at the statement due date (unless you go over your credit limit, but that's really hard to do if you aren't an idiot). If I spend $1000 in a month but pay back $900 of it before the next statement, then as far as everyone involved is concerned I used $100 in credit that month. That's what get's reported to the credit bureaus, and that's what I would theoretically need to pay interest on after the grace period.

Which bring me to the second point, the grace period. At least in the States, credit card companies that offer a grace period (which is pretty much any major one) are legally required to give 21 days on any transaction before interest can start to be collected, and some card companies offer more than that. It's meant to give some wiggle room after your due date in case the company takes way too long getting you your statement, but in an age of all digital everything it essentially means that you have minimum 2-3 weeks to pay off your balance before a single cent's worth of interest can be calculated. And the most important thing is that sort of stacks with the previous point - because no purchase really "counts" until the next statement, you can potentially get up to two months before anything is due.

 

EDIT: I should point out that it is possible to lose your grace period if you go several months carrying balances past the end of the 21 day window, but with proper usage that should never happen and even if it did, you are obligated to get it back after several months of carrying zero balance.

 

Example:

Spoiler

 

 

Say your statement date is on the first of the month. Say I spend $1000 on the 2nd of July. Until the 1st of August, that money is just sort of floating in the ether, no interest, no fees, nothing. If I were to pay off $900 of that on the 25th of July (give a few days for transaction time and all that), then my balance at the end of the month is $100. That means that once the statement comes out, the card company is going to report to Equifax and Transunion and all them that I used $100 out of let's say a $5000 credit limit, meaning that as far as they are concerned I used only 2% of my total credit in July, which over time can give a real nice bump to your credit score.

 

Now on August 1st (or possibly a couple days later) I get my statement saying that I owe $100 due on September 1st. Now at this point the money is properly accounted for and owed, but they can't actually even begin keeping track of interest on any of it until the grace period is over, which would be at minimum August 22nd (and possibly later depending on your bank). So, as long as you pay off the remaining balance before the 22nd, you're off completely free. You get $1000's worth of reward points (probably $10-50 or the equivalent in miles or whatever) and a boost to your credit score, but it cost you nothing other than remembering to pay it off when you pay all your other bills.

 

Spoiler

If you wanted to simplify things you could also just pay off your balance in full a few days before the statement and then you don't need to worry at all about the second transaction every month. However, then when your statement gets reported to the credit agencies all it's going to show is zero balance, which as far as they are concerned means you didn't use your card that month and will have no effect/a negative effect on your credit score. You always want to carry a balance if possible, you just want it to be as low as possible. <20% is good, <10% seems to be ideal (it's hard to really guess considering the dark sorcery that credit agencies perform in order to calculate credit score).

 

This also means that if your credit limit is high enough and you are conservative enough with your spending then you may be able to completely skip the first transaction from the above scenario. If your credit limit is $10,000 and you consistently spend less than $1000 in a month, you can just carry the balance to the statement and then pay it off in full early next month.

 

 

 

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Daily living by means of debt/credit is fundamentally a bad idea, that's not at all the purpose of it despite how it's treated today. Doing this puts you at risk, if something happens and you are unable to cover that risk you are in big trouble and quickly. Always treat debt as risk and have cover for it and don't rely on pay to pay to cover it because that does not actually cover risk. This is precisely why when you get a home loan you also get life insurance with trauma cover to cover the risk. The best risk is the one you don't have.

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding what I'm saying to use credit for. I'm not saying to yolo it and buy a new TV whenever you feel like because hey credit is free money. I'm saying that you save up however much cash you need to buy the TV, then you purchase it on the credit card, collect your rewards and then pay it off before you pay a dime of interest on it. Same thing with groceries or clothes, there's no downside as long as you remember to pay it off. It may have been harder to keep track of in the past but nowadays we have plenty of services that do all the work for you. You add your bank account and your credit cards, and it just keeps an updated number that is bank balance minus card balances. Don't let that number hit zero and you will never not be able to pay your cards off at the end/beginning of the month. Unless you get whisked away to a foreign country where you don't have access to a web browser for 7 weeks, there is zero risk involved.

 

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Then you have other situations like being unable to pay an unexpectedly higher bill or other such thing and you have little choices so you go in to debt, which increases expenditure, then are unable to pay that off because you had very little budge room left in the first place. There is a reason people at or below the poverty line distrust banks so much, finance companies even more, because they are almost always the ones that take them from being just above the line to below it.

This is exactly the same as if you didn't have a credit card. Honestly, it's the opposite: say something comes up that you don't have enough in savings to cover. If you don't use credit, you pay off as much as you can and then you take out a loan. If you do use credit, you pay off as much as you can and then you take out a loan, but chances are that you're going to get a much better interest rate on that loan because you have a well established credit history.

 

And on top of that, the fact that you get this minimum 21 day grace period can be really helpful for lower income people. A handful of years ago I was living paycheck to paycheck, and even though the pay was very consistent it was barely enough to cover my bills every month. Being able to buy groceries or gas now when I don't have the money, knowing that I get paid in a couple days and will be able to cover the cost then is a massive stress reliever when money is that limited.

 

Obviously there is some risk associated with that, and it can be really easy to start rationalizing purchases because "I'll have the money later," but that is 100% the responsibility of the individual making those bad decisions. If someone lacks that self control, then they probably shouldn't get a credit card, but as long as you go in knowing what you're getting yourself into it's really not that hard to manage. And again, a lot of those financial management apps provide options to automatically calculate your average income and factor that into the number it gives you for how much you have to spend.

 

___

 

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong or your financial advisor lied to you, but at least in the US there are some pretty rigid laws in place to make sure you don't get too bent over a barrel. The main difference between any given credit card are rewards, fees, and interest rate, but if you only aim for cards without mandatory fees and you never pay interest, that you are basically just picking based on what will get you the most free money. Yes, it requires the person to have a good head on their shoulders and know how to not frivolously waste money, but the same could be said using cash. You can dig yourself into a way deeper hole with credit, but you also get benefits for buying shit, even shit you were going to buy already, that you would never get using cash or debit.

 

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/credit-card-grace-period/

 

https://www.creditkarma.com/credit-cards/i/avoid-interest-with-credit-card-grace-period/

 

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/credit-cards/answers/key-terms/#grace-period

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Waffles13 said:

I'm not saying to yolo it and buy a new TV whenever you feel like because hey credit is free money. I'm saying that you save up however much cash you need to buy the TV, then you purchase it on the credit card, collect your rewards and then pay it off before you pay a dime of interest on it

Yes that is what it was for, I never said otherwise.

 

1 hour ago, Waffles13 said:

Same thing with groceries or clothes, there's no downside as long as you remember to pay it off.

This is what it is NOT for.

 

1 hour ago, Waffles13 said:

There's two separate things going on: one is that as far as credit cards are concerned, basically nothing that happens in between statements matters, only what your balance in at the statement due date (unless you go over your credit limit, but that's really hard to do if you aren't an idiot). If I spend $1000 in a month but pay back $900 of it before the next statement, then as far as everyone involved is concerned I used $100 in credit that month. That's what get's reported to the credit bureaus, and that's what I would theoretically need to pay interest on after the grace period.

What works fine unless you pay on the last day then the transaction ordering issue as I gave applies. Sure you shouldn't leave it until the last day but it's no less rubbish that banks do this when you actually did your transaction first and they processed it and changed the order to benefit themselves.