Season credit card offers all about the bottom line

The standout offers include the Virgin Flyer credit card, which is offering zero per cent for six months on cash advances, balance transfers and purchases, says the personal-finance editor of comparison site creditcardfinder.com.au, Jeremy Cabral. The BankWest Breeze MasterCard has a low interest rate of 10.99 per cent a year and 10 per cent cashback on your festive spending at department and grocery stores and on eating out for three months.

E-shopping

With more people shopping online than ever before, the potential to overspend is also high.

There is something about sending items electronically to a checkout that makes it easy to end up with a full trolley - virtually speaking - quickly. Paying by credit card or PayPal only adds to the convenience.

The head of merchant services in Australia for PayPal, Elena Wise, says a recent survey found consumers were making 1000 transactions an hour, leaving little doubt the online commerce industry would reach $30.2 billion by the end of the year. Wise says the uptake of mobile devices also indicates people are doing much more impulse buying.

Coincidentally, banks and other credit card providers are on to the growing trend of people shopping via a computer or mobile phone, with offers of zero or low interest rates in the weeks leading up to and just after Christmas.

While this can be good news for those shoppers who know what they are getting into, consumers should be careful about signing up for these deals in the frenzy of being able to use the facility immediately at this time of year. ''Credit is credit and is still borrowed money,'' the chief executive of Resi Mortgage Corporation, Lisa Montgomery, says. Despite the recent cut in official rates, which gave some relief to borrowers, the cost of many routine monthly household goods and services is still running historically high, she says.

Those ongoing financial commitments, in addition to any mortgage you may have, will still need to be paid when the flush of Christmas is over. As well as helping to keep the shopping bills down, PayPal may be a sound option for other reasons.

The first benefit is security. Even if you elect to use your credit card when transacting through PayPal, you are not sharing personal information with unknown merchants or online generally.