Chase Slate Card: 0% APR Balance Transfers and Purchases for 15 months
The Slate from Chase has improved from just being a credit card with a not-really-clever “vertical” design to one that is now offering a competitive 0% APR for both balance transfers and purchases for 15 months to those with good to excellent credit. No annual fee.
The fine print does show a balance transfer fee of 3% with a $5 minimum, which is I’m afraid the norm these days, but you should also consider one of the cards below first to see if they fit better.
If you have a smaller balance to transfer, check out the Chase Freedom Visa – $100 Bonus Cash Back that offers 0% APR on balance transfers and purchases for 15 months and a lower 3% balance transfer fee ($5 minimum). On top of that, you can offset the fee with the $100 cash back you get after make $500 in purchases within 3 months. There’s also the rotating 5% back rewards program. No annual fee.
Finally, the longest 0% balance transfer offer out there is the Citi Platinum Select MasterCard with 0% APR interest for 18 months on balance transfers. There is no annual fee and the balance transfer fee is 3% ($5 minimum). The card also includes 0% APR for 18 months on purchases.
Don’t use this as an excuse to fund any crazy holiday shopping sprees, but instead as an accelerant to pay down any balances or carefully-planned large purchases at a lower overall net interest rate. It’s really hard to find any offers with no transfer fees now, but a loan at 0% interest + a fixed fee spread out over 1.5-2 years can be much better than the current average credit card APR of 14.39%. Unfortunately, there are no longer any no fee 0% APR balance transfer offers to arbitrage easy money with.
By Jonathan Ping | Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 12/23/10, 8:24pm
December 23rd, 2010 at 8:59 pm
this may sound silly but can u do a huge cash withdrawal on one card and then transfer the balalnce to the 24 month card? would that be too costly? i dont have cc balance thats why
December 24th, 2010 at 1:34 am
Yawn. A BT deal with a 5% uncapped fee. I guess that’s what passes for a good deal nowadays.
December 24th, 2010 at 2:16 am
@xmasy – You could just try balance transferring to another card that you use regularly and it will show up as an overpayment. You then ask for the credit balance refunded back to you via check.
@Aaron – It’s not worthy of any arbitrage, but it’s certainly better than the average credit card APR that has actually *risen* even though other interest rates fall. I don’t think we’ll see such easy credit as we did in 2005-2007 for a while.
December 24th, 2010 at 10:36 am
smart-o!
December 25th, 2010 at 8:03 am
A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone. Over here, Christmas is hot and sunny with rain falling instead of beautiful white snow.