The new market-leading all-round credit card

If you like to keep your credit cards simple, the Halifax All in One card is worth a look.

I like all-round credit cards precisely because they make life easier. Sure, it’s a good idea to have separate cards for your purchases and balance transfers, but not all of us want to have two separate credit cards to keep on top of.

And the great thing about all-round credit cards is the interest-free period is exactly the same for both purchases and balance transfers. This was always particularly useful back when card providers were able to employ negative order of payment – where the payments you made each month went towards your cheapest debt first.

So let's say, for example, you had both purchases and balance transfers on the same card, but your interest-free period had finished on purchases. However, you still had a couple of months of 0% interest left on balance transfers. Your payments each month would go towards your cheapest debt – the balance transfers, still enjoying 0% interest – leaving you to rack up interest on your most expensive debt, the purchases.

Thankfully the Government has forced providers to switch this around, so that you pay off your most expensive debt first. However, all-round credit cards still have an important role to play for borrowers, and having identical interest-free periods certainly makes it easier to keep on top of paying off that debt.

The new market-leader

Excitingly, the market now has a new market-leading card, in the shape of the Halifax All-in-One card. The card first caught my eye a couple of years ago, when it offered nine months free from interest on both purchases and balance transfers.

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Thankfully for borrowers, things have become far more competitive since then, so it takes a lot more to get to the top of the best-buy tables. Indeed, to do so, Halifax has now ramped the card up to offer a whopping 13 months free from interest!

That’s a pretty fantastic offer in my book, though there is a catch to consider. In order to get the 13 months of 0% interest on both purchases and balance transfers, you’ll need to be a Halifax current account holder. Otherwise the interest-free period falls to 12 months. Ordinarily this would irritate me greatly. But given the fact that Halifax currently has, in my view, one of the best current accounts around in the shape of its Reward current account, it’s not so bad. For more on the Reward account, check out Earn £60 a year from an empty current account!

How it compares

Let’s take a look at how the Halifax card compares to the rest of the all-round market.

*Only available to existing customers

**Must have Nectar card

So as you can see, even if you don’t fancy taking out the Halifax Reward account, Halifax shares top spot among cards that are open to all borrowers, a very impressive showing.

The best purchase cards

An all-round credit card offers the peace of mind of only needing one credit card, but it still needs to compete against the best purchase cards and the best balance transfer cards. So how does the Halifax card compare?

Let’s start with purchase cards. One provider, Marks & Spencer, has recently stepped head and shoulders clear of the rest of the market, by moving to an incredible 15 months of 0% interest. However, as the table below demonstrates, the Halifax card more than holds its own compared to the rest.

*Only available to existing customers

What about on balance transfers? This is an area of the credit card market that has seen incredible competition over the past few months, with a succession of providers making plays to take top spot.

As you can see, when it comes to balance transfers, the Halifax All in One card has quite a way to go before it worries the market-leaders. However, don’t rule out Halifax altogether – as well as revamping the All in One card, it has also rejigged its Plus card, so that it is now only a little behind the best cards in the market.

So the Halifax All in One card is great if you want to keep things simple, and have a level of debt that you can clear in about a year. But if you have more significant debt, and will need more time in order to clear it, you should probably go for a specialist balance transfer card.

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