Subject: FW:
From: Amitabh Desai <[email-masked]>
To: "John Podesta ([email-masked])" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:27:28 -0500

Just FYI

From: Amitabh Desai
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 1:11 PM
To: Julie Wang
Cc: Laura Graham; 'Justin Cooper'
Subject:

Julie, you know far more about this than I do, but just passing along something I heard that seems - if true - could be an interesting / relatively easy thing for WJC to fix that would impact/improve several million households in the US. is it true that when you use a debit card (as opposed to credit card), it doesn't impact/get reported to credit reporting agencies?

So in a perverse way, you have to use credit cards in order to improve your credit score, but you can't use your debit card (although ironically of course debit behavior is more responsible than using credit cards)

If that's true, maybe there's some way for WJC to get the credit agencies and card issuers to hammer out a deal (perhaps announceable at CGI America, or as a standalone event), that would help millions of credit card debt-laden US households improve their credit ratings by using debit cards rather than using their credit cards?

It would be impactful and is something that probably only someone like WJC could get done. Just a random thought and of course defer to you completely on this. We know VISA well.

Sincerely,
Ami