Tesco is now joint top of the best buy tables after extending the interest-free purchase period on the Clubcard credit card.
Tesco has increased the introductory interest-free period on purchases on its Clubcard for Purchases credit card to a joint market-leading 18 months.
It's now level pegging with Santander, who took the top spot just after Christmas with a new 18-Month Purchase card offering an 18-month introductory period of 0% interest on purchases.
As well as the interest-free period, the Tesco card also offers Clubcard points on your spending. You’ll earn five points for every £4 you spend at Tesco stores and on Tesco fuel, and one point for every £4 you spend elsewhere.
The Clubcard card also offers 0% on balance transfers for the first three months you have the card. If you take advantage of this, you’ll pay a balance transfer of 2.9% of the balance you’re transferring.
However, the Santander 18-month card offers a far longer nine-month interest-free balance transfer period, with a slightly higher balance transfer fee of 3%.
Keep track of your credit card spending with our free, secure MoneyTrack tool
Best buy 0% purchase cards
Here’s how the 0% for purchases best buy table now looks:
|
Card |
0% period |
Representative APR |
|
18 months |
18.9% |
|
|
18 months |
18.9% | |
|
Halifax Purchase Credit Card |
17 months |
16.9% |
|
15 months |
17.9% | |
|
15 months |
16.9% | |
|
15 months |
16.9% | |
|
Royal Bank of Scotland Platinum Balance Transfer and Purchase |
15 months |
16.9% |
|
15 months |
17.9% |
|
|
15 months |
16.9% |
|
|
15 months |
15.9% |
|
|
14 months |
18.9% |
*Only available to Nationwide current account customers
If you don't have a good credit rating
The interest-free periods above will only be offered to people with good credit ratings. If your credit rating isn’t so great, there’s the Barclaycard Initial card, which offers a 0% period on purchases, albeit only for three months.
[SPOTLIGHT]If you want to make one or more big purchases, another option would be to see if you could borrow via a peer-to-peer lender. These match borrowers with lenders and their interest rates are far lower than high street banks and building societies. For example, for borrowing £2,000 over two years RateSetter has a representative APR of 8%, while Zopa’s is 8.7%.
Note again that as these are representative rates they may not be offered to you if your credit rating isn’t great. Whatever you do, avoid resorting to payday loans or other costly forms of borrowing.
The best long-term thing to do is improve your credit rating. You can get top tips on just how to do this in How to repair your credit rating in 2014.
Compare 0% purchase credit cards