Don't fall victim to those Visa or Mastercard sales pitches you get in the mail.There's an easy way to find a good bank card that meets your needs and you might be surprised to how your bank compares.

Go to CardWeb.com. It's been around for about 20 years and the people who run it know the bank card business, said Consumer Champ Bill Clarke.

CardWeb makes it easy to find a bank card that meets your needs. Whether you're looking for specific features or you're open to suggestions, CardWeb has a laundry list of possibilities. For each card, you get a capsule summary of the card and its costs.

Pulaski Bank of Arkansas consistently shows up with some of the lowest interest rates and Pulaski's own Web site was packed with good information with details on just about everything you need to know before completing the application, including their charges for late payment and going over the limit.

On the down side, there's a mix of paid advertising mixed in with the factual information on CardWeb. On the plus side, the site's "CardTrak" section has nearly everything you need to know to find the right card and apply for it. It even shows you some of the questions you probably ought to ask before you apply.

Incidentally, Clarke received a call from his credit union Monday telling him that his Visa card is one of the 200,000 cards compromised so badly that someone could make a counterfeit duplicate and spend their way into a happy life.

The middleman processor who moves money from a customer's account to the merchant's account said it's to blame for the theft. It kept data for what it called "theft research purposes" in violation of agreements with Visa, Mastercard and the other card companies. A bogus program slipped through the security at the same company, putting 40 million cards at risk.

By some industry estimates, losses this year from credit card account theft could hit $60 billion.