Credit cards are tightening their standards and no longer being generous with low promotional interest rates on balance transfers. In fact, many cards have balance transfer fees even with their promotional offers. This information is not always immediately apparent.
I’m assembling a list of current balance transfer fees by credit card. The other day, I listed balance transfer fees on CitiBank credit cards, and today I’m adding American Express to the list.
American Express Offer 1: No balance transfer fee.
• Business Gold Rewards Card
• Business Green Rewards Card
• Clear
American Express Offer 2: There is no balance transfer transaction fee associated with this offer.
• Blue Cash for Business Credit Card
• Blue for Business Credit Card
• Delta SkyMiles Gold Credit Card
• Gold Delta SkyMiles Business Credit Card
• Hilton HHonors Platinum Card
• IN:CHICAGO Card
• IN:LA Card
• IN:NYC Card
• JetBlue Business Credit Card
• JetBlue Card
• The Knot Card
• The Nest Card
• Platinum Business Credit Card
• Platinum Business FreedomPass Card
• SimplyCash Business Card
• Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card
• Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card
Balance transfer offers are not for the faint of heart. They can be used to earn interest on a credit balance transfered to a bank account, but credit card issuers build traps into this process.
- Don’t send a payment late. If you do, you will owe back interest and late payment fees.
- Pay your entire transfered balance off before the term of the introductory offer has ended, otherwise you will owe back interest.
- Don’t use the card for purchases; payments you make will go to your balance with the lowest interest rate first, increasing the amount of interest you’ll owe.
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Are there all 0% balance transfers offered by these cards? If not, I am not really sure why the fee alone is important. The fee and the rate need to be examined together.
Steve: True—the rate is usually easy to find in the introductory offer. The fee is usually buried. That is why I’m compiling this list. At some point, I’ll go back and update the list of APRs on introductory balance transfer offers, but they’re not nearly as great as they used to be.