The idea of a balance transfer deal was introduced to the UK in the year 2000 by innovative online bank Egg plc, who offered customers a bait of 0% interest for six months on balances they transferred from another credit card.
The feature was an instant hit, and more and more card issuers began to offer similar deals as competition for customers grew more intense. Before long, it seemed that every card available had 0% deals of ever-increasing lengths.
It didn’t take long for savvy cardholders to spot a pretty major flaw in the credit industry’s thinking though. With so many cards offering 0% deals, what’s to stop people from becoming serial balance transferers, moving their debt to a new card as the 0% period expires? And so the game of credit card surfing began.
People began to systematically switch their balances to card after card, and if they were organised enough to make sure their balance was moved off a card before the interest charges kicked in, then they could avoid paying interest on their debt for as long as there were new cards available to apply for. In effect, the credit card industry was collectively extending millions of...