One of the main selling points of credit cards over the past decade has been the balance transfer offer, where customers are tempted into applying for a new card with the promise of obtaining effectively free credit. By making use of a 0% transfer deal, they can put off having to pay any interest on an existing debt for a period of six months or more.
These offers were incredibly popular, and led to millions of people regularly moving their balances around from card to card, much to the chagrin of the credit card companies who, victims of their own marketing success, found themselves losing out on billions in interest payments.
As financial organisations are not on the whole known for their generosity, they had to find a way out of their predicament, and introduced the balance transfer ‘handling charge’ which made the whole balance transfer game much less attractive to cardholders who wished to gain the most benefit from their accounts. Luckily for these clued-up credit card customers, there is another kind of offer which can make using a credit card positively profitable: rewards and cashback programs.
Although sometimes treated as different...