Discover More: 0% APR Balance Transfer Fee Cap Ends October 31st

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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.)

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Comments

  1. VicfromATL says

    Jonathan,

    I just want to confirm: If my card is approved and activated b4 Oct 31st, I can still avail $75 Max BT fee even though the BT takes place in November..right?

    Thanks,

    Vic

  2. DollarBill says

    I just checked on-line for my existing Discover More account and my offer for balance transfers includes a 4% fee with a cap of $150. Guess the new cards get a better deal.

  3. I recently applied for this card and wanted to transfer my balance over, but the approved credit limit was only $5,000. I have credit score of about 725-740. I do have about $17000 in credit card balance, which I have sitting in a 3% online account. I wanted to float for another year as I build up my emergency savings. BEcause of this, I transfered to another card of mine, which is only 0% through April.

    Is there a way to increase my credit through discover to $15,000? What is the drawback of closing this card, since i just opened it since it will not benefit me and I will not use it?

  4. I just spoke with a Discover representative and she told me that as long as the balance transfer request is processed by Discover before Feb. 2009, the $75 max BT fee will be applied. I hope this is accurate because I plan on requesting for BT checks and I probably won’t receive them until November.

  5. BofA just screwed me. I had Discover CC send the BT to my BofA CC. BofA was going to send me a check for ~8k, then all of a sudden they told me they are sending it back to the source (Discover) because of the large amount. Rediculous.. don’t use BofA !!!

  6. I have this card (and 3 other discover cards) — and I just got an offer for 0% from HSBC (I think) with a $50/cap – but by invitation only. I may pursue that one.

    My last card was for a $30 credit from Amazon/Chase. I used the $30 and bought a tablecloth and a Spongebob dvd for my daughter. Thanks Amazon! I’m still making money on a transfer from last year (due to expire in December). Maybe I’ll transfer that one to the new card.

  7. My last true 0% expires in May and beyond there I see no use for this trick. Nor any use for my $177k credit limit!

  8. PennyS¢raper says

    I already have that card.I got an initial balance transfer of $7025. Still making money of the deal….However just last week I applied for the Discover Open Roads card with a balance tranfer request@ application and was denied!!! My credit score is pretty good. So I guess they are really thightening things up!

  9. BRS: I have a credit score of 745 and applied for a 10,000 balance transfer about two weeks ago. I got approved for a 9000 credit limit (gave me 8500 in balance transfers). I wanted to utilize the 0% rate on purchases so asked if my credit limit could be raised to prevent from going over the limit and the CSR said to call back after 6 months to request the increase. He said I need to prove my credit worthiness…

    To all those thinking about requesting the BT. Discover will hit you with the 3% or 75 max fee twice if you split the BT between 2 accounts. Be careful

  10. VicfromATL – Yes, you just need to apply while the terms and conditions (print them out to a PDF if you can) show the balance transfer fee cap, and eventually get approved. Approvals can be instant or take a while, but what is on the application is what counts.

    Then, you need to request your balance transfer by February, although sooner is better.

  11. Sending balance transfers to BofA/MBNA/FIA is usually not a good idea. Citibank and American Express are better, although it is always good to mix it in on a card with some sort of usage history and/or balance on it to avoid scrutiny.

    In this case, you can request a check so it is much more straightforward.

  12. It’s the low credit limit (Discover) that doesn’t make this last 0% APR low-fee offer attractive. How many did get over $10K CL?

  13. I got 8k from this card, and had a credit score of 805 (per equifax) a week prior to applying. I asked for more, they declined. Oh well, It’ll still net me about 300 bucks over the year after the fee.

  14. I just confirmed with a rep that, while you can wait until Feb. to transfer a balance, it will still have an expiration of Nov. 2009, not 12 months from the transfer date. So even though I have a few months left on my old 0% offer, I went ahead and did the Discover BT now. One less thing to think about…

  15. Jonathan A. says

    I received an offer just this month for a Chase Platinum MasterCard for 0% APR on balance transfers and purchases until January 2010, and no fee for balance transfers performed with the application. I applied and requested a $30,000 balance transfer to my American Express card, received a credit limit of $8,500 and an $8,000 balance transfer was initiated. When I received the card, I called to activate it and was transferred to a Chase representative who saw I had applied for a larger balance transfer. She offered to transfer all of my Chase credit from another card to this new card and issue another balance transfer with the balance transfer fee waived. When it was over, I had a $27,500 credit limit and $27,200 transferred to my American Express. My cost was $0, and I have the money free and clear for the next 15 months.

  16. VicfromATL says

    Thanks Jonathan.

    I received the BT checks for my wife today, it shows I have to use them by 02/01/09.

    One important thing, Discover mentioned that the $75 fee is for each check. Don’t know whether it is true.

    But it is a great offer though. I got approved for 12K and my wife for 15K. Imagine only $150 of interest for 27K.. that’s .6 approx for a year.

    You rock!!

    Vic

  17. The new policy (maybe new) is to not give cash back on balance transfers. They will do it once, but you will get a verification call and gentle slap on the wrist. Try sending it to a different card. Or if you send it to AmEx, you can only cash it out once so do it all at once.

  18. I applied for this card and the application was cancelled because I had already applied and received a Discover Miles card earlier in October. The CS rep said they are only allowing 1 account per person now as well but because of my excellent history with them my previous card was not cancelled. This gave me the impression that they are possibly closing old accounts if members have more than one.

    The Miles card has a similar BT offer with a $99 fee max instead. As an alternative I was able to move most of my credit limit from my old card to the new Miles card and will be using that for a BT arbitrage.

  19. As a side note…that discover gift card promotions at the mall is back for those that have a heavy budget for holiday shopping.

  20. Jonathan, you mentioned you received a $27k BT after initially having a credit limit of $8,500. How were you able to convince them to give you the BT and increase the limit by that much ?

    I am in a similar situation where I want to transfer around the same amount, rather than paying it off. Thanks.

  21. I applied for the Discover More card even though I have an existing account because they do not offer the same interest rate to existing card holders. I applied the same day this post went up. Discover sat on my application until today, and then retroactively applied their new rule to the application I made last week that you can only have one Discover account at a time. And the balance transfer fee cap is gone from any credit card offer on their website, so there would be no point in canceling the account in order to reapply again.

  22. Follow up: Discover called us yesterday, practically begging us to use a new 0% balance transfer offer ($99 cap) on an existing Discover More card that is in my wife’s name.

    So today we pulled the trigger. Discover would not let us to do a direct deposit into our checking account. Instead, we are paying off a Citibank card that still has an open balance transfer offer that will allow us to then make a new balance transfer direct deposit into our checking account (Citibank Home Rebate card I opening in August).

  23. VicfromATL says

    I was able to deposit BT check in my checking a/c. It cleared.:-)

  24. I was able to get BT checks sent to me with the offer described on my Miles card previously. They should be arriving any day now.

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