NATIONWIDE Building Society has received an award for most responsible credit card lending practices.

The society, which employs 4,000 at its Pipers Way headquarters in Swindon, has been recognised for its transparency and clarity of credit card information and for its positive order of payments and for providing fee-free card use abroad.

"As a responsible lender, Nationwide always tries to ensure all credit card applicants are able to meet their monthly repayments," said Jeremy Wood, Nationwide's director of consumer finance.

"The society always uses external credit reference agency information to help make that assessment."

Nationwide has been campaigning for greater clarity in the credit card market since 1999 when it became the first financial services provider to produce a summary box in its marketing literature.

The industry has since adopted this comparison tool and now all providers are required by APACS to include a Summary Box in their marketing material.

Almost all UK card providers choose to allocate payments first to balances at the lowest rate of interest (for example, 0 per cent balance transfers), leaving balances outstanding on the higher interest rates, such as purchases and cash advances.

Nationwide is the only major credit card provider that applies payments to the most expensive debt first across all its credit cards, saving customers £2.1m in extra interest and helping them to reduce their debt faster.

Nationwide also offers its customers fee-free card use abroad whereas most other providers charge their customers a 2.75 per cent currency loading fee.