I would go for a discover card. If those are your scores might be secured but after I believe 7mos discover becomes a real boy. I have a qs1 and a cap platinum, I had a discover and wish I had focused on it but I kept my focus on cap1 and lost my discover.
Merrick and OLLO (and Cap One to an extent) tend to be the upper end of what is offered to sub-prime profiles unless you go secured. Credit One, 1st Premier and anything from Continental Finance usually charge so many fees that you may as well take all that fee money and open a secured card where you'd get that money back eventually.
There is one lender off the top of my head that is aiming at that market. The Petal Visa just redid the rewards to be competitive with the premium offerings up to 1.5% back. I do not have first hand experience though. They have a prequal option to double check without penalty as a way to get a hold of an application.
The other option is OpenSky with their no credit check but secured style.
I have four secured cards and would rank them like this: Discover > Citi > Capital One > Primor. Citi and Capital One are about the same. The only reason I rated Citi higher is that their app lets you automatically split monthly payment into two equal amounts on different days, to help control utilization. The Citi app also shows your Equifax FICO score, which can be hard to find for free.
Discover is pretty much the Rolls Royce of secured cards IMO. Of course, I only have those four, so I can't rate other cards I don't have.
I may be giving away my age, but I remember when Capital One first appeared on the scene. Unlike most credit card companies I was aware of at that time, they were new, and had few if any other businesses. They did not have bank branches then, for example. They added those later. So to me, Capital One seems like "new money" compared with companies like Citi, Chase, Amex. Of course, every company has to start somewhere, and as far as I know, Capital One isn't considered "predatory" the way Credit One or some others are.
Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't waste a 3B hard pull on cap one. I'd go for a secured citi card. Then wait for it to graduate to an awesome 2% back card like the Citi Double cash after a PC. Takes about 9 months to graduate if they deem you reliable.
I know there's more to it than FICO score, but just as a temperature reading, what FICO scores do you think someone would need to PC a freshly graduated Citi Diamond card to DC? Thanks!
Not sure if a scores even matter after they've graduated you already. I was in 740s when mine was PCed it to the DC.