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Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Card Review. Ultimate Resource For Credit Card Reviews

Amazon Prime Rewards "5% Back" Visa Signature Card Review

This card gives Prime members a high cash-back rewards rate at Amazon and Whole Foods and more.

Key Stats:

* Base Rewards Rate: 1% Cash Back
* Bonus Rewards: 5% At Amazon.Com And Whole Foods Market; 2% Back At Restaurants, Gas Stations And Drugstores
* Sign-Up Bonus: $100 Amazon Gift Card For New Cardholders
* Annual Fee: Must Be Amazon Prime Member (Costs $139 A Year)
* Apr: 14.49% To 22.49%, Variable

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The Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature credit card (issued through JPMorgan Chase) is one of several personal and small-business credit cards Amazon offers.

While in other ways unremarkable, this card’s 5% cash back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases makes it a great potential option for anyone who shops regularly at the retail behemoth. It may be a good choice if you’re a person who likes to take advantage of deals on Amazon Prime Day, for example.

If, however, you’re not a die-hard Amazon or Whole Foods fan, you can easily find a card with a higher base rewards rate than the 1% this card offers, as well as cards that offer generous bonus rates (if not quite 5%) in certain spending categories, including groceries—and not just at Whole Foods.

Are The Fees Worth The Rewards?

The Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature card doesn’t charge an annual fee, but you do have to be a member of Amazon Prime, which currently costs $139 a year (or $14.99 a month.)

If you run a balance, you also will pay between roughly $14 and $23 each month per $1,000 borrowed, depending on your APR.

The big draw for heavy Amazon users is the unlimited 5% cash back you get on Amazon purchases (as well as Whole Foods purchases, both in-store and online). In addition, spending at restaurants, gas stations and drugstores earns 2% cash back and all other purchases earn 1% cash back.

Here’s The Math On This Card: If you charge $3,000 a month like our typical reader does, and then you spend $10,000 at Amazon over the course of the year (or roughly $830 a month), you would earn $500 cash back in a year—just on Amazon purchases you’re already making.

And even if the remainder of your spending wasn’t in categories that earn 2% cash back, you would still earn another $260 with the 1% cash back on other purchases. That is a total of $760 a year in rewards and more than enough to cover the cost of Prime membership.

If you have our reader’s typical credit card spending habits and half of that—or $1,500 a month—takes place at Amazon, you can earn even more: $1,080 in cash back per year.

Card Details You Might Miss

While we judge cash-back credit cards primarily based on their rewards offers, it’s important to understand all the terms and conditions. Here are some other key points to keep in mind about the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature:

* No Promotional Apr Available For New Purchases And Balance Transfers

* 5% Balance Transfer Fee ($5 Minimum)

* No Foreign Transaction Fee

Who Benefits Most From This Card

While a 5% cash back rate on Amazon purchases is great for people who are already Prime members, we don’t expect anyone to run out and sign up for a $139 annual membership just to get this card.

But if you are already a Prime member and your spending is already concentrated in the Amazon ecosystem, this card could be a great way to offset the cost of your Prime membership and rack up some pretty generous rewards.

There are no big sign-up bonuses aside from a $100 Amazon gift card, which is about half the value of most other cash-back cards’ new-cardholder bonuses. The real appeal of this card is its high cash-back rate on Amazon purchases.

One area where you will have to be careful is if your household has more than one Amazon account. To earn 5% cash back, you need to make sure that Amazon purchases are transacted through the Amazon account you used to open the card.

Purchases made via the others could earn 3% cash back unless you proactively confirm your card number and choose that as your payment card.

Other Amazon Credit Cards

The Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature is just one of the cards offered by the e-commerce giant. There’s also the Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card, which doesn’t require a Prime membership, and offers the same 2% back at restaurants, gas stations and drugstores as well as 1% back on other purchases, but its cash back rate for Amazon purchases is 3% rather than 5%.

For business customers, the Amazon Business Prime American Express and Amazon Business American Express cards have similar rewards tiers as the Prime Rewards Visa Signature and Rewards Visa Signature, respectively, although each caps its top reward level at $120,000 in spending annually.

These two cards also give users cash back for Amazon Business, Amazon Web Services and for wireless phone spending in addition to accelerated rewards earned from shopping at Amazon and Whole Foods. (Terms apply.)

Amazon also offers the Amazon Prime Store, Amazon Store, Amazon Prime Secured and Amazon Secured cards, issued by Synchrony Bank. Prime Store and Prime Secured cardholders can earn cash back as a perk of their Prime membership.

If You’re Not Into Amazon Prime

People who aren’t already Amazon Prime members might instead consider a straightforward cash back card like our pick for Best Cash Back Card, the Wells Fargo Active Cash®, which offers a flat 2% back on purchases.

If you prefer categories with enhanced rewards, another option could be the Citi Custom Cash℠ card, which has a top rewards rate of 5% in your top spending category every month.

People whose spending tilts more heavily toward dining or travel might be able to earn greater rewards with one of our other cash back card picks, such as the Capital One SavorOne Rewards Credit Card, which offers 3% cash back on dining and grocery store purchases.

What To Know About JPMorgan Chase Credit Cards

JPMorgan Chase is the largest credit card issuer on the market, according to market tracker Nilson.

It also is the largest U.S. bank by assets, with more than 4,800 domestic branches. While you don’t need to visit a branch to have a credit card and earn rewards, you do have the option of visiting a bricks-and-mortar location.

Chase wasn’t among the top three national card issuers in the most recent credit card satisfaction survey conducted by research firm J.D. Power.

Methodology: How We Evaluated The Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Card

To review cash back credit cards, we looked for cards with the best cash back rewards rate, both overall and in popular spending categories like grocery and travel.

We also looked for cards that were easy to use, since we assume most readers are not credit-card obsessives willing to keep and track a dozen cards.

Updated: 6-3-2022

What Is Friendly Credit Card Fraud?

Ever disputed a charge that looked shady—but oops, it turned out to be legit? Here’s what to do next.

It’s a common scenario: You see an unfamiliar charge on your credit-card statement, so you call your card issuer, flag it and quickly get a refund with few questions asked.

But then, oh no, you realize at some point after the money is already back in your pocket that you were actually the one who was mistaken.

You’ve just committed what the credit-card industry calls “friendly fraud.”

Shoppers may be experiencing this situation more often, retail experts say, with the rise of “buy now, pay later” payment options and app-based purchasing.

These may encourage more impulse purchases—charges that, by the time your billing statement arrives, may have slipped your mind. Now what do you do?

Friendly fraud happens when a consumer disputes a charge, either accidentally or intentionally, and receives a refund for a legitimate charge. In a sense, friendly fraud is a misnomer.

Credit experts say that most incidents of it are actually intentional. And for your credit-card issuer, friendly fraud is a big problem

“Many businesses are losing significantly more money to all types of friendly fraud than they are to genuine credit-card fraud itself, where somebody steals a credit card,” says Shmuli Goldberg, chief marketing officer at Identiq, an identity verification network based in Tel Aviv that works with American retailers.

When this happens, retailers are the ultimate losers.

Intentional friendly fraud—perpetrated by what some in the industry call “liar buyers”—happens when someone knowingly claims a legitimate charge is fraudulent.

Sometimes these actually stem from buyer’s remorse—perhaps a credit-card user’s child racked up huge in-app charges outfitting an avatar or someone in the household drunk-bought a dozen roses for an ex.

But purposeful or not, these types of purchases typically rise to the level of petty larceny and not grand larceny, so they’re rarely prosecuted, according to Steve Weisman, a senior lecturer in law, taxation and financial planning at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass.

“They’re not considered significant enough for prosecutors to spend the time involving themselves in it,” says Weisman, who also operates the blog Scamicide, focused on identity theft and cybercrime.

How To Avoid Committing Friendly Fraud

It’s important to look through your charges before you pay your credit-card bill, Weisman says, and calling the retailer when you see something odd on your bill is the best way to sidestep friendly fraud. If it’s an unfamiliar retailer, you may want to use a search engine to locate the contact information.

If You Call The Retailer First, You May Get Details That Establish The Credit-Card Charge Was Legitimate And Sidestep A Friendly Fraud Situation. A Quick Call Could Establish That:

* The Company Listed On Your Statement Is A Holding Company Or Appears With An Abbreviated Name, Rather Than The Merchant Name You’re Familiar With.

* There May Be A Difference Between The Date You Made A Purchase And The Date The Charge Was Recorded, Which Could Jog Your Memory.

* Someone Else In Your Household With Access To Your Card Made A Purchase You Didn’t Know About.

Of Course There Are Times When, Instead Of The Retailer, You Should Call Your Credit-Card Company First, Because The Charges Suggest Fraud Or Theft. Make That Call If Your Bill Shows:

* Purchases From A Store In A State Or Country That You Haven’t Visited Lately Or Ever. (You May Be A Victim Of Card Theft.)

* Tiny Charge Amounts, Say Less Than $5. (Sometimes Thieves Will Test Out A Card With Small Charges To See If It Works Before Making Larger Purchases.)

* Cash Advances That You Didn’t Make. (Someone May Have Gotten Access To Your Pin Number.)

What To Do If You’ve Accidentally Committed Friendly Fraud

If it turns out that you’ve made an honest mistake and disputed a legitimate charge, you have a few choices.

You can ignore the situation, though from a legal standpoint, that’s not ideal: “Fraud requires intent in order to be a crime,” Weisman says. “The moment you become aware that you should not have gotten a refund, that’s where it actually turns into fraud.”

If you choose to take action, you can call your credit-card company and explain briefly that you disputed a charge that was actually legitimate. In a case like this, the credit-card company will investigate, and it’s possible the retailer could be refunded for any fees it was charged.

(Beyond the money the retailer should have received for your purchase, it may also face other fees including what’s called a chargeback fee, typically between $20 to $100.)

You could also call the retailer and explain the situation. That’s what Lauren Beitelspacher, an associate professor at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., who has studied retail returns for 15 years, did recently. (Yes, even retail experts sometimes mistakenly commit friendly fraud.)

Beitelspacher received a refund for a makeup order that the major beauty retailer indicated had arrived but that she didn’t receive. When the package later showed up, she called the retailer and offered to return the items, but was told to just keep them. “I’m actually now even more loyal to them because I know if a problem happens, they’ll solve it,” she says.

How much friendly fraud costs the industry is unclear, as it’s difficult for retailers and card issuers to distinguish between the various types of fraud, but credit card fraud overall is projected to cost businesses approximately $408 billion in losses globally over the next decade, according to Nilson Report, a payments-industry publication.

In the U.S., the average fraud incident is $335 according to Outseer, an anti-fraud technology company based in Palo Alto, Calif.

Whatever choice you make may depend upon your personal feelings about retail karma: “At the end of the day, if you make the call or offer to return something that doesn’t really belong to you, you’ll know you did the right thing,” says Beitelspacher. “I think more good happens when we do the right thing.”

Updated: 6-9-2022

What To Know About Credit Cards Offering Electric Vehicle Rewards

You may have been getting credit-card rewards for years every time you fill up your car’s gas tank, depending upon what type of card you have. Yet owners of electric vehicles haven’t had that same perk—until now.

Prior to this year, you would have been hard pressed to find many credit cards offering EV rewards, though that finally has started to change. U.S. Bank began offering EV rewards in January on its business and consumer credit cards. Several months later, Sam’s Club joined the EV rewards bandwagon.

All this means EV owners now have several options, although there are still some caveats. One is that these cards typically reward you for charging at a public charging station, and usually not for charging your car at home where costs are lumped in with your home’s electricity bill.

Another is tied to one of the prime benefits of owning an EV: It costs a lot less to fill your vehicle’s “tank” than a traditional car’s. That translates into less opportunity to earn rewards than for, say, a gas card. Still, for the right electric vehicle driver, the rewards may make owning an EV even more attractive.

If you’re thinking of getting a credit card that offers EV rewards, here’s your road map.

Credit Cards That Reward EV Spending

So far, possibly because EV rewards remain a niche offering, the credit card rewards for plugging in a vehicle look very similar to what you would receive for filling up your car at a gas station.

For instance, if you have a Sam’s Club® Mastercard®, you can earn 5% cash back at an eligible EV charging station. After spending $6,000 per year, which would be unlikely, you’d then receive 1% cash back.

And U.S. Bank offers several ways to earn EV rewards: The U.S. Bank Altitude Go Visa Signature Card offers two points for every dollar spent at an EV charging station, just like it does for cardholders spending money at a gas station.

The U.S. Bank Cash+ Visa Signature Card has categories that change every quarter, but one of the rewards you can get is the option to earn 2% cash back when you plug in your car at an EV station, which is also what you’ll get if you fill up your tank.

Cardholders of the U.S. Bank Altitude Connect Visa Signature Card will receive four points for every dollar spent at a charging station—or at a gas station. There is a $95 annual fee to consider, though it’s waived during the first year.

And don’t confuse the EV rewards credit cards with charge-card offers. The PointCard™ Titan is an actual charge card—that is, you have to pay off your balance in full every month—and it comes with a $399 annual fee.

But it gives cardholders five points for every dollar spent at an EV charging station. The FutureCard Visa Card is also a charge card. It gives cardholders 5% cash back on EV charging as well as other eco-friendly purchases such as public transit and bike shops.

Worth remembering: Even if you don’t have a credit card that offers specific EV rewards, you still may get some cash back, points or miles when you charge an electric vehicle. Many cards offer 1% cash back, for instance, on all purchases and then have various tiers for other shopping categories.

So you would likely at least get the minimum amount of rewards for charging an EV if you’re using a credit card that isn’t marketing itself to electric vehicle owners.

Are EV Rewards Cards Worth It?

Ultimately whether it’s worth getting a credit card with EV rewards depends on your credit card habits and how much you drive. If you have an electric vehicle, you’ve spent a lot on your car—according to Kelley Blue Book it costs a little over $65,000 on average to purchase an electric vehicle—but you won’t be spending much at the pump.

In fact, the Zero Emission Transportation Association, a federal coalition focused on advocating for 100% EV sales by 2030, recently found that nationally EVs are three- to five-times cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered vehicles. In some states, EVs are five- to six-times cheaper to drive.

The Kelley Blue Book suggests motorists will typically spend $55 a month charging their electric cars. Here’s the math on that: It would be $660 a year to charge your car—and $33 in cash back based on a 5% rewards rate.

That’s likely enough to earn you a couple of free trips to the charging station. But unless you are someone who carries multiple credit cards, and is willing to sign up for a card you use just to charge your electric vehicle, you are probably better off with a card that offers a top rewards rate on a different spending category, like groceries or travel.

For instance, the average American household spends nearly $5,000 a year on groceries. The Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card offers 3% back on most supermarket spending, amounting to a potential $150 a year in rewards—a far better deal if you are someone who just wants to carry a single card.

“If you want the truth, unless they up their benefits, I don’t really see a card specific to EV charging rewards being all that popular,” says Karen McGrath, an assistant professor of finance at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa.

When EV Rewards Cards Are A Good Deal

Still, if you drive a lot—and frequently charge your car away from home—you could eventually rack up the kind of charging costs that make a specialty card worth your while.

So-called fast chargers at public charging stations, designed to charge a car battery in about 20 minutes, can be far more expensive than plugging in at home.

A charge from one of these typically costs two- to three-times what you pay in your own garage, according to Gil Tal, director of the Plug-in Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California, Davis. “If you’re an Uber or Lyft driver with an EV, I would get one of those credit cards immediately,” Tal says.

And even if you are a homebody, who mostly charges overnight and rarely has the chance to earn rewards at public charging stations, you may still be able to get some benefit from a credit card that offers EV rewards.

Every calendar year, after paying six months of electric bills with a My GM Rewards Card™, you’ll earn a $100 credit card statement—provided you’re charging a registered electric GM vehicle.

EV Rewards Credit Cards May Become More Generous

The future of EV rewards could be bright, suggests Dionne Nickerson, assistant professor of marketing at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. One of Nickerson’s specialties is researching corporate social responsibility.

Nickerson agrees that EV rewards won’t be a huge cash reward incentive for some consumers. Plus, there’s the psychology to wrestle with. After all, if you’re spending a small fortune on gas, you’re at least getting what feels like a small fortune in cash back, miles or points.

If you’re spending less to charge your car, what you get back will be less too. Still, Nickerson says that regardless, it is another rewards opportunity, which consumers may appreciate, especially environmentally friendly ones.

“In the next five to 10 years, you’ll probably see a lot more credit cards doing this, for the simple fact that they realize that this is important to Generation Z,” Nickerson says.

Updated: 6-24-2022

Wells Fargo Active Cash® Card Review

Wells Fargo Active Cash, with unlimited 2% cash back on purchases, is our pick for Best Overall Cash Back Credit Card.

Key Stats:

* Base Rewards Rate: 2%
* Bonus Rewards: None
* Sign-Up Bonus: $200 When You Spend $1,000 In First Three Months
* Annual Fee: None
* Apr: 15.74% To 25.74%, Variable

Wells Fargo Active Cash® offers a flat 2% cash rewards on purchases (exclusions include things like gift cards). It’s the best cash back rewards rate we found that applies to all your spending and doesn’t come with a cap or any other onerous restrictions. This card also boasts no annual fee and a $200 sign-up bonus that’s easy to qualify for.

(You must spend $1,000 in the first three months). For some card holders it may be possible to earn higher rewards with other cards—if, say, you spend heavily on groceries or are willing to open a checking account.

But if your goal is to find an easy-to-use credit card with a top cash rewards rate, you can’t go wrong with Wells Fargo Active Cash. It’s why we named this card Best Cash Back Card for 2022.

Are The Rewards Worth The Fees?

Since the Wells Fargo Active Cash card has no annual fee, there won’t be a cost to hold it unless you fail to pay the balance in full every month. If you do run a balance, however, it will cost you between $13 and $21 each month per $1,000 borrowed, depending on your credit score.

If you’re a person who regularly pays off your balance, the potential rewards can be big. This card comes with a $200 sign-up bonus after you spend $1,000 in the first three months, and it offers 2% cash rewards on your spending.

The rate is uncapped and across all categories, so you don’t have to jump through any major hoops to collect your rewards. (As with other cards, you cannot earn cash back rewards on items like gift cards, money orders or gambling chips.)

All that means that if you spend $3,000 a month like our typical reader does, you will earn $920 in cash back rewards in your first year with the card, and $720 in subsequent years.

While cardholders with certain spending habits may be able to find alternatives that work better for them, Wells Fargo Active Cash’s combination of sign-up bonus, high cash back rewards rate, and no other restrictions, make it the best all-around cash back card.

Card Details You Might Miss

While we judge cash back credit cards primarily based on their cash back offers, it’s important to understand all the terms and conditions.

Here Are Some Other Key Points To Keep In Mind About Wells Fargo Active Cash:

* 0% Apr For 15 Months On New Purchases And Qualifying Balance Transfers (Made Within The First 120 Days), But With A 3% Balance-Transfer Fee (Min. $5).
* After 120 Days The Balance-Transfer Fee Is 5% (Min. $5).
* After 15-Month Introductory Period, New Purchase And Balance-Transfer Apr Is 16.49% To 26.49%.
* Up To $600 Cell Phone Protection When You Use It To Pay Your Cellphone Bill
* Visa Signature Concierge, Which Offers Travel And Dining Assistance
* 3% Foreign Transaction Fee

Who Benefits Most From Wells Fargo Active Cash?

Given the sign-up bonus and cash rewards rate, this is a great card if you are someone who doesn’t carry a balance and is looking for a card with generous cash back rewards. It’s especially true if you are not a credit card obsessive who intends to track every purchase, but instead are looking for one single, hassle-free card to use for all your purchases.

While Wells Fargo Active Cash is, according to our criteria, the best all-around cash rewards credit card, there are some caveats. Cardholders who are willing to jump through some extra hoops, or whose spending is concentrated in certain narrow categories like groceries or travel, may be able to find a card that works better for them.

For instance, a cardholder who is merely looking to get the highest possible cash back rate—and is willing to do some extra work to get it—could do slightly better with another option, the Alliant Visa® Signature. This card offers holders a slightly higher 2.5% cash back rate, also on all types of purchases.

That rate could allow a cardholder spending $3,000 a month to earn $900 a year in rewards—higher than the $720 they would earn with Wells Fargo Active Cash after the first year.)

However, the Alliant Visa Signature, offered by the Alliant Credit Union, comes with a number of significant stipulations.

These include joining the credit union and maintaining a checking account there with direct deposit and a $1,000 balance. The 2.5% rate also has a cap: It drops to 1.5% after you spend $10,000 a month, and the card comes with no sign-up bonus.

Similarly, cardholders whose budgets are heavily weighted towards certain spending categories like groceries or travel, may be able to do better with cards that emphasize these particular areas. The Capital One SavorOne Rewards Credit Card offers 3% back on groceries (other than big box stores) and dining—an attractive option for big families—but only 1% back on most other purchases.

A cardholder with a $3,000 monthly budget who spent $1,500 or more on groceries and dining out would come out ahead with the Capital One card; less than and they would do better with Wells Fargo Active Cash. (Both cards have similar sign-up bonuses.)

What To Know About Wells Fargo Credit Cards:

* Wells Fargo is the 8th largest credit card issuer on the market, according to market tracker Nilson.

* Wells Fargo is the 3rd largest U.S. bank by assets, with more than 7,000 branches. That means, while not a necessity for owning a credit card, it should be relatively easy to visit a bank branch if you want.

* However, Wells Fargo was not among the top major issuers in research firm J.D. Power’s most recent credit card satisfaction survey.

* Wells Fargo has had a sometimes rocky relationship with regulators since agreeing to pay $3 billion in 2020 to settle claims its employees opened bank accounts in customers’ names to meet company sales goals.

Methodology: How We Evaluated The Wells Fargo Active Cash Back Card

To review Cash Back Credit Cards, we looked for cards with the best cash rewards rate, both overall and in popular spending categories like grocery and travel.

We also looked for cards that were easy to use, since we assume most readers are not credit-card obsessives willing to keep and track a dozen cards.

The advice, recommendations or rankings expressed in this article are my own, and have not been reviewed or endorsed by our commercial partners.

Zero-Interest Credit Card Offers Aren’t A Free Ride

Transferring your balance at 0% sounds mighty tempting if you have a growing mound of debt, but most people should probably stay away.

Now is not a good time to be running up the balance on your credit card.

Interest rates are climbing. The average rate for a new card is more than 20%, based on a review by LendingTree of about 200 card offers from banks and credit unions. For the past several years, card rates for those carrying balances had hovered around 16%.

Across all income groups, more borrowers are worried that they won’t be able to pay their credit-card balances in full, according to a recent LendingTree survey. The drop in confidence comes as rising prices spur US consumers to rely more heavily on plastic, piling up credit-card debt.

Card companies know you hate paying interest, so to convince you to take out a new card, they’ll offer to let you transfer your balance from a competitor’s card and pay zero interest — for a little while, at least. After a year or so, interest kicks in at say, 20%, or even higher.

Still, the idea of getting 0% interest on your credit-card balance for even a short time is super tempting. A study from NerdWallet found that 11% of respondents had applied for a balance-transfer offer — and that was in April before the Federal Reserve began really hiking rates. Millennials were the demographic most likely to do so.

And while lenders are starting to be a bit more cautious, they’re still comfortable extending balance-transfer offers to people with middle-of-the-road credit scores. A score of about 670 is all you need, says Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.com. (The average credit score is around 710 these days.)

If you qualify, there’s plenty of reason to proceed cautiously. These offers won’t necessarily save you all that much money. If you have substantial credit-card debt but excellent credit, you may be better off getting a personal loan. Or if you have relatively poor credit, working with a nonprofit credit counselor may provide you with more options.

First, there are fees. Transferring a balance to a new card typically means a charge of anywhere from 3% to 5% of the total balance. So when you’re calculating how much you’ll be saving in interest with the 0% offer, be sure to factor in what you’ll be paying in that upfront fee. And if a card issuer says there’s no balance-transfer fee, it probably means they won’t be as generous with the zero-interest time period.

Plus, as interest rates move higher and delinquencies increase, card issuers are likely to make their balance-transfer offers less attractive, charging even higher fees for less time at 0%.

These balance-transfer offers also come with limits. You often won’t know how much of your balance you can shift over until after completing the application and getting approval. The average credit line for new accounts, including balance-transfer ones, is about $9,000 for someone with excellent credit, $4,900 for very good credit and $2,300 for subprime credit ratings.

For those with balances, the mean debt amount is about $6,300. So be prepared to be approved (usually based on a proprietary formula that takes into account your credit score and income, among other things) for a transfer that may be less than the amount you wanted to move. Rossman says that while card issuers may still be pretty flexible on creditworthiness, they’re being a lot stingier when it comes to credit limits.

Also, be aware that you typically have a defined window of time to make the transfer, and you’re generally prohibited from making a transfer to a different card with the same issuer.

The biggest risk, though, is your best intentions. While you may resolve to make payments diligently every month to chip away at the balance so that you can pay it off before the 0% offer expires, it’s not always so easy. About half of Citigroup Inc.’s balance transfers ultimately convert to revolving balances after the promotional period, the bank disclosed during an earnings call last year.

What’s more, you won’t necessarily know exactly what the rate will be after the 0% ends. The card issuer will give you a range, but it can fluctuate, and the onus is on you to inquire.

So for the most disciplined among us with excellent credit and a big credit balance that would be nice to pay off interest-free, a balance-transfer card can be worthwhile. But a personal loan might be even better. Such loans can help to streamline debt into one, fixed payment. You’ll pay more than 0% interest, of course, and there may be fees, but you’ll lock in a rate of, say 6%, for longer, such as up to five years.

If your credit has suffered, a nonprofit credit counselor can work with you to negotiate fees and interest with your card company, and create a repayment plan.

For that matter, before you consider a balance-transfer card, why not just pick up the phone and talk with your current card issuer? The company may be motivated to work with you because it doesn’t want to lose your business to a competitor’s balance-transfer offer.

According to LendingTree, 70% of those who asked to lower their interest rate in the past year got at least some reduction — and the average decrease was 7 percentage points. Those numbers have stayed pretty consistent through the years, says Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree, and he doesn’t expect it to change anytime soon.

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