Balance Transfer Day is not what it seems. The seemingly grassroots movement, which piggybacked on the success of November's Bank Transfer Day, is operated by a man who is paid to consult and write for both Credit-Land.com and BestCreditOffers.com, websites that make money when consumers successfully apply for credit cards.Michael Germanovsky, 35, set up a Facebook page in November urging people to transfer their credit card balances to low-rate cards. On the page Germanovsky wrote, "Why don’t we beat the banks at their own game and demand the same 0% interest rate that they receive from the federal government?"
But Germanovsky isn't an activist working against big banks. He's a paid consultant and writer for Credit-Land and its sibling site BestCreditOffers, two so-called lead generator websites that push customers to products, in this case credit cards, via ads and special offers. (On his LinkedIn page Germanovsky claims to be editor-in-chief of Credit-Land, though in an interview he said it's "just a title.") Credit-Land and BestCreditOffers make money when consumers successfully open a new account.