Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to start off with a point that Mr. McKay was making, I think, which is that people have a tendency to procrastinate. In fact, you could probably argue that one particular gender is predisposed towards procrastinating, which is the one that I belong to. My wife tells me I procrastinate fairly regularly. But people tend to think that when they go into their website and they authorize a payment on their credit card, that payment has been made and it has been made on time.
The problem with the way the system works right now is it's not clear that those payments are not being made instantaneously. That's the problem. What happens is if this payment is received two days late by VISA, using it as an example, they will register that as 30 days late. It goes on your credit as R2. If you have a number of R2s on your credit rating, it lowers your overall credit score. And even though as far as you're concerned you've always paid your credit as agreed, you've always maintained it, you've been a good credit customer, you may not qualify for prime lending fees because of this misunderstanding as to how electronic payments are carried forth.
I've dealt a lot with retail finance at one time and a lot of people come in and tell me that they've always paid their bills, they've always paid them on time. They don't understand why their credit score would not be perfect, and I think this is a reason why; they don't understand that authorizing a payment is not the same as having made the payment.
How can we assist people? How can we make it so that they understand the system better and can use it better to their benefit?