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Credit Cards - Retail Purchase
Moneyfacts Credit Cards best buys:
Follow the links below to Learn about different types of Credit Cards guide:
- Credit Card - Store Cards
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- Credit Cards - Donations Cards
- Credit Cards - Top Level Guide
- Financial advice guide
- Get Out of Debt - Top Ten Tips
- Gold / Platinum Credit Cards
- Graduate Finances
- How to survive the credit crunch - Moneyfacts.co.uk top tips
- Money makeover
What is a Retail Purchase Card?
- You can make retail purchases on all credit cards. Retail purchase credit cards include an initial offer of low or no interest on retail purchases for a period of time. Many of these are combined with interest free periods for balance transfers.
Who are they suitable
for?
- A 0% retail purchases credit card is suitable if you're a big shopper. You can spread the cost of your purchases over the interest free period, sometimes up to 12 months.
- Each repayment made during the interest free period reduces the debt, so pay as much as you can.
- If you intend to pay off the full balance each month, you won't get any benefit from a 0% offer. You may get more benefit from a cashback credit card or rewards credit card.
- Take a look at our retail purchase credit card best buy for the best deals around.
What should you look
out for?
- Once the interest free period ends all the purchases revert back to the standard interest rate, so to avoid paying interest you'll need to pay off the full balance before that time.
- Make sure you understand which order your debts get paid off in by your lender. Many lenders pay off lowest interest rate transactions first so interest slowly starts to increase on the interest bearing transactions. So if you have a card which has a 0% balance transfer rate that lasts longer than the 0% on retail purchases period, your interest free purchases could become interest bearing before your balance transfer does.
- ‘Cash transactions' like withdrawing money from an ATM are unlikely to be included in the 0% offer.
So you can understand the ins and
outs of credit cards, Moneyfacts.co.uk has put together guides on things to
watch out for and the key factors to consider when purchasing a
card.
If a retail purchase credit card
isn't for you, we've got guides and credit card best buy tables for 0% balance
transfer credit cards, rewards credit cards, donation credit
cards, cashback credit cards and overseas usage credit cards.
What to do next
Take a look at the latest credit cards best buys to check the latest rates and deals on offer.
