I am currently waiting to see if my spouse has been approved for this card. I have read that it will convert to a unsecured credit card once credit is established or improved. Does anyone have any data points on this card or experience with this card? Please share and thank you in advance.
I am still waiting to hear if my spouse is approved for this card or not. We have done a lot of research trying to find secured cards with easy approval standards and with the ability to covert to a secured card. As good as secured cards like Discover and BOA and SDFCU are, these cards can be difficult to be approved for sometimes if you have no credit or are starting to rebuild but have no current reporting lines. My spouse has been declined for secured cards like Discover and BOA and even SDFCU. The first card approval with a 400 range credit score came from OpenSky (no credit check) but now we are hoping for approval from Armed Forces Bank.
If this card is approved it will open up a whole new window (even if you can't rent cars with it) for people with little or no credit, who have been turned down by other secured cards that convert, to obtain a secured card easily that has the ability to convert to a unsecured no annual fee card that can rent cars.
Obtaining both this card from Armed Forces Bank and one from Academy Bank (same company, basically same bank) would give someone 2 secured credit cards with 25 day grace periods that both would convert to unsecured cards, allowing you to keep the accounts for years even after getting your deposit back. This is a much better deal than OpenSky, a card with the same annual fee but that doesn't convert ever to a unsecured or fully unsecured card.
I'll be sure to report any data points we obtain in the next few days and if anyone has any secured card experiecnes or has actually had a card convert to unsecured with Armed Forces or Academy Bank please share your results.
Well they only do a soft pull for approval which is great but my spouse was denied do to insificient length of credit history so I guess for now opensky and applied bank are the only 2 truly secured no credit checks cards that are available nationwide without having to join a credit union. They soft pulled Transunion 2 days after the application was submitted. At least they do not hard pull like so many other secured cards out there do.