A credit card company will offer people with bad credit ratings a bad debt credit card. But don't get excited just yet.
You can classify bad debt cards into 2 categories based on what you understand by bad debt. The first category of bad debt cards is those credit cards that are secured (and are also known as secured credit cards).
The bad debt credit card is opened with a bank where it is secured with a deposit by you into an account. The credit limit on this kind of card can vary but is usually a percentage of the deposit amount. This can be a good way to restart your credit rating.
The secured type of bad debt credit card lets you spend as much as there is in your deposit account. The only difference is the way you spend the money, with the credit card instead of cash.
This way you still get to have the benefit of having and using a credit card. Because the bad debt credit card works the same way as a so called regular credit card. The card issuing bank doesn't have to worry about getting their money paid back because if it isn't it can be taken out of your account.
The other category of bad debt cards are nothing unusual, they are the same cards that we know of most commonly; the only difference is in the way you get them and the objective behind getting them. Here, we are talking about the credit cards that you use as a debt consolidation mechanism i.e. consolidating bad debt (as such any debt is bad).
For this situation the bad debt credit card is called that because you can transfer all of your high rate card balances onto these credit cards and save money with the lower monthly payments. So for the time you are only required to pay the lower payment you can pay more towards the outstanding balance to get it down.
The two bad debt credit card types discussed above are both ways to help you get control of your debt. So do some research on both types and use whichever method will work best for you.