Credit card transfers are a great way of ensuring that you’re always using the best credit card for your needs. Essentially a credit card transfer is when the unpaid balance on a credit card is moved from bank to bank, such that the new credit card supplier repays the debt owed to the previous one and so effectively takes on your lending and becomes your new credit card holder: one way of looking at it is that you are using your new card to repay the remaining amount on another card.
In paying a card off in this manner, you can shut down the old card and so end your agreement with the older card company: the outstanding sum will adopt instead the new ts and cs you have signed up to with your new lender. There can be any number of advantages to this form of credit card transfer perhaps the new card offers to charge less each month, or perhaps they have lower thresholds for minimum repayments each month which allows you to reduce your monthly outgoings . The new lender may even have some added benefits such as credit card rewards, air miles or increasingly they many offer 0% interest on the any money you move from card to card, which would allow you to have all the money you pay off each month be used in its totality against the amount you owe rather than being used up in paying for the card itself and paying credit charges.
When carrying out a credit card transfer, you must always be scrupulous in ensuring that you close the old account . If you leave the old account open you might feel inclined to borrow against it again in future, in which case you might end up facing a situation in which you are borrowing more from your cards than you can comfortably repay each month . When transferring your cards you may even cut up the old card and not be planning to use it again, but this isn’t the end of it : unless you physically close down the account by getting in touch with the lender, any future check on your credit will show that you have this lending facility available to you, which will reduce the amount that you might be able to borrow in future against big ticket items like furniture, cars or your home. .
The credit card rewards that might motivate your decision to do a credit card transfer are uncountable. One type of credit card reward is air miles, in which for a proportion of the amount of money you spend on the card, you are given an allocation of miles on air travel. By accruing these air miles you can bring down the cost of air travel . This is particularly useful for frequent fliers . Some supermarkets also have their own type of credit card rewards, under which they bump up the discounts on your store loyalty card when you spend on your credit card. These can then be used to minimise the money you spend on your grocery shop . Some credit card rewards even include discounts towards your bill with specific wine merchants ! Although this is a great deal for the right customer, you should think long and hard before entering into a credit card transfer because of a credit reward such as a discount on your wine bill – there must be other, more significant factors you should bear in mind when comparing credit cards.