APACS has announced that, “following a successful meeting on 11 December between the [UK] credit card industry and Government, real changes for credit card holders who may be struggling to make their regular payments are announced. This delivers on the industry’s commitment to draw up new principles made at the credit card summit on November 26th.

APACS has published a fact sheet (PDF file) to explain exactly what has been agreed and what the changes mean for credit card holders.”

This could mean big and very good changes to a credit card structure in the UK that has been broken for a number of years. People will be able to pay their credit card bills without unfair rules cracking them at every turn.

The Guardian reported that UK credit card “lenders were given two weeks to come up with a set of “fair principles” and warned that the “Office for Fair Trading would be asked to investigate if they failed to agree on a plan.” Meaning their solution wouldn’t go down very well if they were forced to intervene. Perhaps the US should give this a look and adopt some of these policies (though now they’re adopting some of them, albeit reluctantly, in the wake of the credit crunch there).