Secured Credit Card

[dujaidecor]

What is the best secure credit card to apply for? Does it even matter?

[pizzadude]

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@dujaidecor wrote:

What is the best secure credit card to apply for? Does it even matter?

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It depends on what you are wanting to get from the card.   If all you want is a revolving tradeline then just make sure that it reports to all three CRAs.   There are probably minimum deposits required that will vary amongst creditors.

If you are wanting a card that will graduate to an unsecured card then you'll need to do some homework ~ creditors have different policies and practices, sometimes cards won't ever convert at all.

[Duncanrr]

Ive just gotten two recently and have done a tremendous amount of reading on this.  The best one was Orchard (but cap1 just bought them so no longer available).  The list that I have seen goes like this: (1) Capital One Secured MC, (2) Wells Fargo Secured Visa, (3) Navy Federal Credit Union nRewards (problem is that you or family member has to be member of military to be eligible) (4) Bank of America, (5) First Progress MC, (6) Applied Bank Platinum (7) Citi Secured MC (You have to mail this in by snail mail) (8) US Bank Secured Visa

This is my list based on my reading and a collection of various rankings by people writing articles.  I tried to avoid ones that had high monthly fee and those that did not give 1:1 credit on deposit to CL and had some chance of maturing to unsecured card.

Note: if you belong to local credit union then I would check with them also.  Mine has an unpublished secured card that I could get but Cap1 and WF were better (Credit union was 11.24% interest but required deposit of $500 and would either give me credit for only 50% or 80% of that deposit based on my credit score.  It did earn interest but not much and had no chance to mature to unsecured or have CLI.)  There are no Discover or AMEX secured CC's.

[Anonymous]

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@Duncanrr wrote:

There are no Discover or AMEX secured CC's.

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I am not familiar with any secured product that uses the Discover Network though, there may very well be one.  However, I have a secured American Express card from USAA Bank.   You do have to be a member of USAA Bank to be eligible for the secured American Express card.  This card uses the American Express network, it is not a product that comes from American Express, it is distributed by USAA Bank.  

[Duncanrr]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Duncanrr wrote:

There are no Discover or AMEX secured CC's.

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I am not familiar with any secured product that uses the Discover Network though, there may very well be one.  However, I have a secured American Express card from USAA Bank.   You do have to be a member of USAA Bank to be eligible for the secured American Express card.  This card uses the American Express network, it is not a product that comes from American Express, it is distributed by USAA Bank.  

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I should clarify.  There are no Discover or AMEX cards from those specific providers.  There are cards that use AMEX network but they are not issued with AMEX and have no opportunity to mature to unsecured AMEX card.

[sjt]

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@dujaidecor wrote:

What is the best secure credit card to apply for? Does it even matter?

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I think some of the best secured cards are from credit unions. Check out State Department Federal Credit Union and USE Credit Union.