A new look Halifax credit card? Looks familiar to me!
Halifax is launching what it describes as a ‘new look’ One credit card.
It charges no interest on balance transfers and purchases for nine months, and has a typical long-term interest rate of 13.9 per cent.
Look good to you?
Its attraction may fade a bit when I tell you that the old Halifax One card, which it replaces, also offered nine months interest free on transfers and purchases, but had a typical standard rate of just 9.9 per cent.
Halifax has added the sweetener of a further six months interest free for new transfers made ‘from the start of the calendar month following the first year anniversary of the card’.
And who exactly is going to take advantage of this part of the offer?
Borrowers who think it’s worth leaving a balance clocking up interest elsewhere until they can transfer it to their Halifax One card on its first anniversary, when they could move it now and stop paying interest altogether?
Or those who think it’s a good idea to spend the year making purchases on another interest-charging card, just so they can transfer them later, when they could make them interest free with Halifax?
I sincerely hope not.
The only circumstance in which it would be worth taking up phase two of the Halifax One offer is if you have a second zero per cent card with a balance that needs transferred off in a year’s time to avoid the start of interest charges.
So there you have it: a new look card that looks pretty much like the old one - apart from the addition of an offer that will benefit few people, and a long-term interest rate 40 per cent higher than the old one.
Ken Stannard, Halifax’s head of credit cards, says excitedly: ‘This is yet another high-street banking first from the Halifax.’
Yes, indeed.
If you really need another credit card, you can do better. If you don’t believe me, you can seach the latest credit card best buys here
June 14th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
i read somewhere the big banks made £38 billion profit last year. No bloody wonder!