Mastercard

MasterCard Credit Card Review

The issuer offers a wide range of cards for every conceivable lifestyle and financial requirement to cardholders around the world. Their website lets potential customers choose what interests them most in a card and lets them “design” their credit card account accordingly.

Their cards are accepted in over 24 million destinations across the globe, which makes MasterCard the most widely accepted and perhaps distributed card in the world.

Range of Cards:

There are no annual fees payable on any of the cards. Customers can choose between rewards and cashback cards, low introductory periods and cards with low on-going rates. There are student cards and secured cards for those who need to build up or repair their credit history.

The issuer also has a number of schemes with partners, issuing charity cards and store cards for example. Prepaid credit cards are also available via MasterCard.

The Chase Freedom MasterCard offers a $100 bonus cashback. Customers applying for this card need a good to excellent credit history though. The card has a 0% APR introductory rate for 12 months on balance transfers and 6 months on purchases with up to 5% cashback on spending of up to $1,500 on purchases such as dining out, goods in department stores, donations to charities or nights out at the theatre or movies. After the initial interest free period the APR rises to rates from 11.99% to 22.99%, depending on creditworthiness at the time of joining.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card allows customers to earn up to 50,000 in bonus points; however, they need to spend at least $3,000 in the first three months of signing up before they can qualify. The bonus points equate to $625, which can be redeemed against travel. Aimed at more affluent cardholders, the card also allows customers to earn an additional 7% annual points dividend, which is also applicable to points that have already been redeemed during the year. There is no introductory grace period for purchases or balance transfers and the APR variable is 15.24%, which is fairly competitive.

MasterCards are also issued via Capital One and here potential customers can choose from Platinum Cards and Platinum Prestige Cards with no annual fees being payable for the first year and a $19 fee payable after that. The APR for the Platinum Card is high at 24.99% but this card is available to customers with a “fair” credit history and balance transfers are possible. The Platinum Prestige MasterCard comes with a 0% APR on balance transfers and purchases made until January 2013, has no annual fee and after the introductory period is over the APR is from 10.99% to 18.9%. Excellent credit history is needed for this card.

There are also MasterCards for people with fair credit and bad credit. See Household Bank Card, Orchard Bank Card, and Bad Credit Credit Cards. The range of MasterCards issued by financial institutions around the world is too extensive to discuss here, so the above is just a small selection of what is available for different type of customers’ requirements.