Credit Cards

Editors’ Best Credit Cards for Sep 2018

Best For...	Card Name	Annual Fee	Credit Required
Best Credit Card for Travel	Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card	$0 for 1st yr, $95 after	Good
Best Credit Card for Students	Journey® Student Rewards from Capital One®	None	Limited History
Best Credit Card for Balance Transfers	The Amex EveryDay® Credit Card from American Express	None	Good
Best Credit Card for Bad Credit	Discover it® Secured	None	Limited History
Best Credit Card for Airline Miles	Lufthansa Credit Card	$89	Good
Best Credit Card for Cash Back	Citi® Double Cash Card – 18 month BT offer	$0*	Good
Best Credit Card for Groceries	Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express	$95	Good
Best Credit Card for 0% Purchases	Citi Simplicity® Card - No Late Fees Ever	$0*	Good
Best Credit Card for No Credit	Capital One® Platinum Credit Card	None	Limited History

Knowing your credit score is crucial to finding the right credit card. If you don’t know where you currently stand, you can check your latest credit score for free on WalletHub. The top credit cards overall require good or excellent credit for approval.

 

2018 Credit Card Landscape Report

To help people better understand the credit card market, WalletHub tracks interest rates, rewards and fees across credit segments, highlighting the most important trends in our quarterly landscape reports.

Overall, credit cards are becoming both more expensive and more rewarding. Annual fees and APRs have both risen over the past year, while initial rewards bonuses have gotten richer and 0% introductory APR periods have gotten longer. In other words, there are plenty of great credit card deals to be had these days. But you need to choose the right card and use it responsibly to benefit.

Below, you can find some key points from our latest credit card market snapshot.
 

Q2 2018 Credit Card Offers:

 

Category	Q2 Average
Annual Fee	$15.88
Regular APR	19.05%
Initial Bonus	$139
Ongoing Rewards Rate	1.06% back
0% APR Purchase Period	10.59 months
0% APR Balance Transfer Period	12.06 months
Foreign Transaction Fee	1.51%

For all of the latest credit card market averages, check out WalletHub’s complete Credit Card Landscape Report.

 

2018 Credit Card Debt Study

Americans repaid $40.3 billion in credit card debt during Q1 2018 – the second-largest quarterly payoff ever. However, we began the year owing more than $1 trillion in credit card debt for the first time ever, after adding a post-Great Recession record $91.6 billion to our tab in 2017.

Only four times in the past three decades have we overspent so much in a year. And in each case, the charge-off rate – currently near historical lows – rose the following year. That’s true so far, as charge-offs jumped nearly 5% from Q4 2017 to Q1 2018.

So it’s not a question of whether consumers are weakening financially. It’s a matter of how long this trend will last and just how bad it will get.
 

2018 Credit Card Debt Snapshot:

 

Stat	Q1 2018	Q4 2017
Total Credit Card Debt	$958.6 billion	$1.008 trillion
Average Credit Card Debt per Household	$8,166	$8,595
Quarterly Change	- $40.3 billion	+ $67.2 billion
Charge-Off Rate	3.8%	3.6%

Check out WalletHub’s complete Credit Card Debt Study to learn more about how much credit card debt U.S. cardholders rack up every three months and what debt levels mean for your wallet.

 

Credit Card Benefits Studies

• Credit Card Rewards Report: Hundreds of credit cards offer rewards. But they won’t all reward you equally. To help credit card shoppers make an informed decision, we compared the most popular rewards cards to see how much the average person would earn with each over two years of use.


• Return Protection: Find out whether your favorite credit cards will cover returns on recent items that the store won’t accept.


• Rental Car Insurance: Don’t pay for rental car insurance when your credit card provides it for free. But make sure your card has good enough coverage.


• Price Protection: Lots of credit cards have a price-matching feature, where you can get a refund for the difference between what you paid for an item and a lower price advertised soon thereafter.


• Extended Warranty: Many credit cards will extend the manufacturer’s warranty on eligible items, giving you extra time to get a refund, exchange or free repairs.


• Travel Insurance: The best credit cards for travel insurance will cover you for accidents while in transit, lost or delayed luggage, delayed or cancelled travel, and more.


• Purchase Protection: Sometimes, items we pay for with a credit card break or get stolen soon after we buy them. Purchase protection is a complimentary benefit on some credit cards that covers the cost of repairing or replacing the item.


• Small Business Credit Card Study: Business credit cards are not legally bound to provide the same user protections as personal credit cards. But some credit card companies proactively extend certain benefits to their business card customers.

 

Credit Card Industry Statistics

• Market Share by Credit Card Issuer: Learn which banks and credit unions issue the most credit cards, plus which credit card company’s customers spend the most.


• Market Share by Credit Card Network: See how Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express credit cards compare in terms of purchase volume and number of cards in circulation.


• Number of Credit Cards and Credit Card Holders: Find out how many people have credit cards, how many cards they have on average, and how those stats have changed over time.


• Credit Card Consumer Satisfaction: Credit cards should make life easier, not become a source of frustration. Learning which credit card companies make their customers happiest can help you find the right fit.


• Historical Credit Card Interest Rates: See what interest rates credit card users have paid over time, including the averages for all accounts and accounts with a balance.


• Currency Exchange Study: Find out how much you can save by automatically converting currency with a credit card while traveling abroad, versus exchanging money at a bank or airport kiosk.


• Credit Card Deferred Interest Study: Retailer financing can be a dangerous proposition, thanks to a feature known as deferred interest. Learn what it is, who uses it and how to avoid it.