@FormerCollegeDJ wrote:I was playing around with the usbanklocations.com website looking at banks located where I currently live and various places where I used to live, and after checking out a few community banks I realized some of them issue credit cards through an organization called TCM Bank, which stands for Total Card Management Bank. TCM is a subsidiary of the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), an advocacy organization representing community banks around the U.S.
TCM Bank has some similarities to Elan Financial Services (a subsidiary of US Bank that as many of you know manages the credit card programs for many regional banks), but generally speaking the banks served by TCM Bank tend to be much smaller. All three of the banks I came across that offer TCM Bank managed credit cards have less than $2 billion in total assets. (As a frame of reference, the Big Four banks of Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citibank all have over $1 trillion in assets, banks like US Bank, Truist, PNC Bank, Capital One, and TD Bank all have about $400 billion to $600 billion in assets, and many regional banks have at least $5 billion to $10 billion in assets and in many cases more than that.) Having said that, just from the limited research I did, it also appears the TCM Bank cards are not offered by small/very small community banks with less than $500 million in assets. (Those banks generally speaking do not offer credit cards at all, even through a third party.)
It appears TCM Bank offers four credit cards through its partner banks; all of the cards offered, at least at the banks I saw, are Visa cards. The cards include:
*Visa Signature Travel: 1.5 points per $1 on all purchases, earn 30,000 points by spending $2500 over first three months
*Rewards Platinum Visa: 1 point per $1 on all purchases
*Cash Rewards Platinum Visa: 1% cash rewards on all purchases
*Platinum Edition Visa: low long-term APR (8.99% to 18.99%)
All four cards offer 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for the first 12 months. They also generally have relatively low long-term APRs.
Obviously the TCM Bank cards are not going to be of interest to people focused on high rewards/cash back rates, though they may intrigue people who are paying down debt and/or belong to one of the member banks. From looking at the application information, it appears that like the Elan Financial Services cards offered at various banks the TCM Bank cards are also not geofenced to the specific bank branded on the card.
Does anyone use or have experience with any of the TCM Bank managed credit cards?
Doing a forum search reveals very little aside from that they seem to pull Experian for apps and CLI's and appear to be quite conservative. Most CU's can provide better rates if you're looking for a vanilla card to carry a balance with. It also appears the subscribing FI's have little to no say over underwriting, so I'm not certain that having a banking relationship with a particular FI is going to hold any sway on TCM's decision or terms regarding your personal credit profile.
