The Financial Blog

Halifax is launching a new credit card today, the Halifax Plus. Halifax say it’s the best all round 0% deal available from today.

•  0% for 13 months on balance transfers (3% BT fee) 
•  0% for 6 months on purchases 
•  A typical APR of 15.9% 
•  No annual fee 
•  Cover against online fraud when purchasing on the internet

I can’t see how this card is better than the current Halifax One credit card;

• 0% for 12 months on balance transfers (3% BT fee) 
• 0% for 12 months on purchases
• A typical APR of 15.9%
• No annual fee

>>> Halifax One credit card - click here to apply now…>>>
  
Take this example;

You go for the Halifax Plus credit card as opposed to the Halifax One card and transfer a balance. Then you spend on the card and the rate is 0 per cent for 6 months. After 6 months the money you have spent will be charged at 15.9 per cent APR Typical. However, any payments you make will still be paying off the balance you have transferred and not the purchases made. This is because Halifax will be making 15.9 per cent Typical APR from the purchases you have made and they want this debt to stay on the credit card for as long as possible, so they make more money in interest charges. Therefore Halifax will reduce the balance you have transferred until it is paid off before the purchases are repaid.

If you don’t spend anything on the card then it makes no difference, infact the Halifax Plus card is probably a better option because you have 13 months rather than 12 months 0 per cent on balance transfers. But with the best will in the world how many of us actually NEVER spend a penny on the new credit we’ve got because of a 0 per cent balance transfer rate??

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 11:24 am and is filed under Credit Cards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.