What are the best points credit cards with 0% interest on purchases?

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• Adam says:

  8 Jan8 January 07:33

  The Lloyds avios rewards card offers 0% on purchases for 24 months with NO handling fee so it’s totally free money!

  • Mr Dee says:

    8 Jan8 January 21:56

    None have a handling fee for purchases its only balance transfers I believe

• Brian says:

  8 Jan8 January 07:35

  Rob, tesco premium credit card comes with 6 months interest free on purchases.. Cheers

  • Rob says:

    8 Jan8 January 10:16

    Thanks. Didn’t see that on MoneyFacts.

    • Brian Peers says:

      8 Jan8 January 12:25

      nope – they literally must have pulled it in the last week! I retract!

      • Rob says:

        8 Jan8 January 13:50

        Must have disappeared on the same day that the 5,000 Clubcard points sign-up deal was pulled.

• Crafty says:

  8 Jan8 January 07:48

  To be clear, the advantage here is not necessarily to repay after the 0% period ends, it is to shift the balance to another card offering a 0% balance transfer for its own fixed period, and so on ad infinitum.

  • Dave says:

    8 Jan8 January 09:05

    Except most 0% balance transfer offers still charge a one-off fee for the balance transfer. I’ve yet to see a balance transfer offer that makes sense, instead of just paying it off.

    • John says:

      8 Jan8 January 09:18

      There were plenty between say 2012-2015, and also back in the “good old days” of Chancellor Brown. Tesco itself had a 0% BT card with 0% BT fee in 2013, which I took out.

      In the past I would pay BT fees up to 1%. If it’s a 24 month offer and savings accounts are paying more than 0.5%, then you have made the fee back (on sufficiently large balances otherwise the min payments over the stooze period need to be factored into the calculation).

      I don’t do it any more because nowadays, bank interest rates are near to 0 and as you say, the one-off fees seem to invariably be 3%. And it’s only worth doing on *extra* money (see my comment above which I have not yet written).

      I had about £30,000 stoozed at one point (way more than my income) which was earning >£800 interest per year after all the card fees. This was around 40% of my total credit limits and didn’t seem to affect my creditworthiness.

• Brighton Belle says:

  8 Jan8 January 07:57

  Presumably your credit score takes a massive hit carrying a large balance for many months and the odds of approval and churning other cards goes down.

  • Gavin says:

    8 Jan8 January 08:44

    Not really, what would start to push your score down is high levels of available credit utilisation, but having for example 30k of available credit and using 5k of that is very unlikely to cause a problem. Of course that doesn’t mean you want to do it if you’re about to apply for a new mortgage.

  • John says:

    8 Jan8 January 09:21

    There is no credit score in the UK. Each financial institution has its own criteria for approving card applications.

    Carrying large balances may look good to a bank which wants to earn lots of interest from you.

    Gavin is also correct. If you don’t go over more than half of your available credit limit then you are less likely to have any problems.

    • Genghis says:

      8 Jan8 January 09:33

      MSE say that getting credit is like dating. Some men like women with big bums (that’s my one), some banks like people with high balances. Different strokes for different folks.

      • the_real_a says:

        8 Jan8 January 14:18

        Exactly – if you carry a large balance, then you are exactly the customer a provider of a “balance transfer” card will be interested in. You are more likely to be turned down for a card designed for “purchases”

  • the_real_a says:

    8 Jan8 January 14:26

    Its better to think of credit scores as a calculation of what is “normal” for you. For example if you have a history over the last 12-36 months of obtaining and paying off £50k of debt then you are likely to be accepted for this and more in the future. A “Big balance” is relative to the individual, and “hits” to your credit scoring happen by doing something out of the ordinary compared to your three year trend.

• Wally1976 says:

  8 Jan8 January 08:39

  You can still earn reasonable interest rates (admittedly on moderate sums) if you are willing to have lots of current accounts and keep moving money between them plus associated regular savers. Unfortunately Lloyds are dropping their club Lloyds rate to 2% today (still have 4% regular saver I think), but there’s still a few around eg Tesco (2 accounts each at 3% up to £3k), Nationwide FlexDirect (5% on £2.5k but only first year) with 5% regular saver, TSB, First Direct and HSBC regular savers etc

  • John says:

    8 Jan8 January 09:36

    3 or 4 years ago I was chastised by Rob(Raffles) for stoozing, although it was far more profitable for me than collecting Avios has ever been.

    However, stoozing into high interest current accounts is only worthwhile if it would give you extra cash to put into savings.

    People who Rob considers “more likely than average to be HFP readers” probably already have £25k of cash in savings and are in the higher rate tax band.

    This is true for me, so I have already maxed out all the current accounts and savers that pay 1.5%-6%. Any cash that I generated from stoozing would go into my unlimited 0.7% saver, which becomes 0.42% after tax (notwithstanding the savings personal allowance which I have also maxed out).

  • Trev says:

    8 Jan8 January 09:38

    The lloyds saver dropped to 3% a few months ago, nationwide does a 5% max £500/month which I now use instead of then lloyds one, requires a nationwide current account though

• Kathy says:

  8 Jan8 January 10:16

  The Lloyd’s interest free period on the Avios card has worked really well for me. I don’t have an enormous credit card spend – around £6k over a year – which I would normally clear in full each month (because, duh). That made the £7k spend target for the upgrade voucher tough to hit. I would normally get an interest-free loan from work to pay for my train season ticket, which is my biggest purchase. With the interest free period on the card I was able to use it to pay for my season ticket (£3700) and therefore trigger the upgrade voucher much sooner. I’ve set up a DD to pay it off in monthly instalments so I don’t accidentally spend he extra money coming into my account each month.

• Nick says:

  8 Jan8 January 11:03

  There are still a few BT cards out there at 0% interest AND 0% fee. I’ve got two at the moment and another lined up for June when one runs out. It gets disbelieving comments from people who don’t think ‘free money’ can be true but I can vouch for the fact that it is! I’m disciplined though – it’s not a massive amount (under 10k), and I keep it available in savings (i.e. high interest current account) so I could pay it off any time if asked (which I never have been so far). The 0 fee BTs are typically 2 years in duration. Tesco do one at the moment actually, but guessing Rob doesn’t mention it here as it’s non-commissionable for him.

  • Nick says:

    8 Jan8 January 11:04

    Also doesn’t seem to affect churning of points cards.

  • Genghis says:

    8 Jan8 January 11:10

    Are the disbelieving comments from the Daily Mail set?

  • Rob says:

    8 Jan8 January 11:38

    It’s not that, I work on the basis that HFP readers are not the balance transfer types. It has been mentioned on Shopper Points.

    You also don’t earn Avios on a balance transfer so it is more MSE territory than mine.

    • Cate says:

      8 Jan8 January 12:59

      Rob – I really want seats on Air France’s new first class product but hear that redemptions are practically non existent.

      Does it have legs to buy tickets on any of our usual loyalty cards and then transfer the balance over to a free balance transfer card; offsetting (aka rationalizing!) the original purchase points against the outstanding balance? And if so which card? (sorry if I haven’t explained that very well).

      • Rob says:

        8 Jan8 January 13:48

        If you would otherwise be paying interest, then the 3% fee to move the debt to a balance transfer card is worth doing – it is a better option than paying 19%-22% interest on a mileage card.

        If the question is: “Does it make more sense to use, say, a BA Amex for a purchase and then pay 3% fee to move the debt to a 0% balance transfer deal elsewhere, compared with using a 0% purchases deal in the first place” the answer is no. There isn’t a card where the rewards are that valuable – except, perhaps, if you were struggling to hit £10,000 for a BAPP Amex 241 voucher.

        If you’re running a credit card balance, however, clearing that should be your main focus rather than juggling other cards for miles and points. In a perfect world the total amount of credit card interest paid by the HFP readership each month would be £0. It will already be close to £0 but we can always improve on that figure.

        • Alan says:

          8 Jan8 January 14:02

          Although if you go with a no-fee 0% option then a bit more worthwhile.

          Totally agree no-one should be paying any interest if you’re on a points earning card though, totally negates the benefits!

        • Cate says:

          8 Jan8 January 20:34

          Thanks Rob.

    • Rick says:

      9 Jan9 January 00:34

      Legacy Lloyds Avios card: 1500 Avios points per £1000 transfer with 3% fee, nil interest for 6-9 months. Continuously available. (1500 points cost £30, coupled with £1000 to play with for 6-9 months.) Or looked at another way: £1000 balance transfer with APR of 4.5% and 1500 points thrown in.

• JM says:

  8 Jan8 January 12:25

  No mention to the Amex Gold Credit Card? 0% for 18 months and an effective 1:1 earn on Avios through Membership Rewards is a good contender in my opinion. However, I’ve only seen it running exclusively on MoneySupermarket.

  • Rob says:

    8 Jan8 January 13:50

    Good point. MoneyFacts – which is in theory comprehensive – doesn’t cover that because it is just with MoneySupermarket, where presumably it is dying a death. I am not allowed to have it.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      8 Jan8 January 14:45

      Foes that credit card exclude you from future MR charge card bonuses?

      • Rob says:

        8 Jan8 January 15:13

        Yes, because you will have an MR account and that is the driver in whether you can have another Gold / Plat bonus.

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