In June, I wrote a nice rant about credit card offers I was receiving with the words "Remove contents before you discard." I thought, and others agreed, that the offer implied that I needed to open the envelope to avoid the risk of identity theft.

Now Citibank is attracting controversy by mailing 3.5 million credit cards to department store customers who didn't ask for them. The cards are being sent to customers who who have had inactive accounts for more than two years.

According to CNN, "A federal law dictates that banks can issue credit cards only when customers request them or they replace existing cards. Citi considers the cards replacements to the Macy's cards already accepted by the customers."

Calling new cards sent to customers have been inactive for two years seems pretty aggressive, and consumer advocates have expressed concern that the personal information of customers could be breached.

Citi is playing pretty fast and loose with the law here. Customers shouldn't receive credit cards in the mail that they didn't ask for and don't want -- and that is exactly what is happening here.

Citibank mails new cards to inactive customers originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It seems that I get about five credit card offers per day in my mail (and I can see why many Americans are broke). Actually, a study from Synovate's Mail Monitor shows that there were 6 billion such offers in 2005, up from 2.7 billion in 1995. Yet, the response rate has gone from 1.4% to 0.3%. In other words, credit card issuers are looking for new channels. And, of course, the internet is the next frontier.

One of the key players in the space is CreditCards.com, which has filed to go public. Basically, with the site, consumers can research, compare, and identify various credit card offers. For each approved application, CreditCards.com receives a fee.

From 2004 to 2006, its revenues surged from $11.5 million to $42.9 million. During this time, adjusted EBITDA went from $5.8 million to $21.4 million.

The largest source of traffic comes from the major search properties, such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). There is also substantial competition, such as credit card issuers -- Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Citigroup (NYSE: C) -- as well as other websites: CardOffers.com, CardRatings.com, CreditCardGuide.com, and so on.

The lead underwriters on the IPO include Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS) and Citigroup.

You can find the prospectus on the SEC website. Also, if you want to check out more IPOs, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

CreditCards.com: Looking for an IPO reward originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 11 Aug 2007 13:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.