It looks like the credit crunch continues to trickle down to everything financial, including tightening up in the credit card industry. I have it on good authority that the $75 balance transfer fee cap on the Discover More card will end on October 31st. (Update: Yes, the cap is now gone.)
Why care? The Discover More Card – No Balance Transfer Fee* is just about the last credit card with a 0% APR balance transfer for 12 months, as well as a $75 balance transfer fee cap. This is important because you may have noticed that nearly all other 0% APR cards have an uncapped 3% fee. So if you transferred $10,000, the fee would be $300. On a $20,000 balance, that would be $600!. The cap saves you lots of money, and these offers have only gotten more scarce with time.
Even though I don’t carry a balance, I have used this card to make some extra money off credit card arbitrage.
Getting Your Money
You can usually request a balance transfer to be sent directly to a card with a balance on it. (Or you could send it to a Citibank card without a balance on it, and request a refund check.) However, a reader wrote in last week to say that you can also call them up afterward and request a balance transfer check to be sent to you directly from Discover.
If you’ve been thinking about applying but putting it off, now would be the time to do it! According a Discover CSR, if you apply now to lock in the offer, you have until February to request your balance transfer. (Update: There is now no cap.)