Best Mastercard Credit Cards

• Why people trust WalletHub
• Our picks
• The competition
• Learn more about Mastercard credit cards
• How we picked the best Mastercard credit cards
• About the author
• Sources
• User questions & answers
• Expert opinions

 

Citi Premier® Card

 

Why We Like It: The Citi Premier® Card is the best Mastercard credit card because it offers 1 - 3 points per $1 on purchases, plus an initial bonus of 60,000 points for spending $4,000 in the first 3 months.

 

What We Don’t Like: The Citi Premier card has an annual fee of $95, and a high APR will apply to balances carried from month to month.

 

Who Should Get It: Consider applying for Citi Premier if you have good credit or better and can comfortably afford to spend $4,000 in the first 3 months after opening an account.

 

Alternatives to Consider: The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card also offers a lot of bonus rewards, including on travel and dining purchases, but it’s on the Visa network.

 

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Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card

 

Why We Like It: The Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card is the best Mastercard for bonus cash back rewards. For starters, it currently offers $300 to new cardholders who spend $3,000 within 3 months of opening an account. Capital One Savor has great ongoing rewards, too, giving unlimited 1 - 5% cash back on purchases, depending on the category.

 

What We Don’t Like: This card has an annual fee of $95, and a high APR will apply to balances carried from month to month.

 

Who Should Get It: Consider applying for Capital One Savor if you have good credit or better and want a way to save on dining, entertainment, travel and grocery store purchases in particular.

 

Alternatives to Consider: The Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card offers similar rewards and has a $0 annual fee.

 

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Citi® Double Cash Card – 18 month BT offer

 

Why We Like It: The Citi® Double Cash Card – 18 month BT offer is the best Mastercard credit card with no annual fee because it also offers great rewards. Cardholders earn a total of 2% cash back on all purchases – 1% when a purchase is made and another 1% when the bill gets paid. Citi Double Cash can even help you reduce the cost of existing debt with its 0% introductory balance transfer APR.

 

What We Don’t Like: There is a balance transfer fee of 3% intro fee ($5 min) for each transfer in first 4 months, after that 5% ($5 min) for each transfer, and the card’s regular APR is pretty high.

 

Who Should Get It: Consider applying for Citi Double Cash if you want to earn above-average rewards on all purchases without worrying about how those purchases are categorized. You also need at least fair credit for approval.

 

Alternatives to Consider: The Wells Fargo Active Cash® Card is another great flat-rate cash back credit card, but it’s on the Visa network.

 

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Capital One Quicksilver Secured Cash Rewards Credit Card

 

Why We Like It: The Capital One Quicksilver Secured Cash Rewards Credit Card is the best Mastercard for bad credit because it has a $0 annual fee and rewards cardholders with 1.5% cash back on all purchases. 

 

What We Don’t Like: This card requires a security deposit of at least $200. Fortunately, this deposit is fully refundable when you bring your balance to $0 and close your account.

 

Who Should Get It: Consider applying for Capital One Quicksilver Secured if you have limited or bad credit and want to save money as you improve your credit standing.

 

Alternatives to Consider: There are several secured credit cards offering attractive rewards right now.

 

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As you can see, there are many Mastercard credit cards to choose from, for all types of people. WalletHub’s editors compared more than 300 Mastercard credit card offers based on their rewards, rates, fees and approval requirements to help you find the right option for your needs. We then selected the best Mastercard in a range of popular categories. For your convenience, we’ll recap those selections in the following comparison table.
 

Best Mastercard Credit Cards Comparison

Having a credit card on the Mastercard (or Visa) network is especially important if you plan to travel abroad. Mastercard and Visa are the most widely accepted card networks globally, and their currency-exchange rates are much lower than what local banks and airport kiosks tend to charge. In fact, you can save up to 11% on currency conversion with a no-foreign-transaction-fee Mastercard or Visa.

Furthermore, we recommend checking your credit score for free before applying for a new card. This will help you find the best deal and determine whether you’re likely to get approved.
 

There are lots of really good Mastercard credit card offers on the market right now. The following offers didn’t quite make the cut for our editors’ best-card selections, but they can still save cardholders a lot of money.

Mastercard is one of the two major worldwide card networks, along with Visa. There are more than 230 million Mastercard credit cards in circulation in the U.S. alone. Roughly 1 of every 4 general-purpose credit card offers available to new applicants right now are on the Mastercard network. And Mastercard credit cards are accepted in more than 210 countries and territories worldwide – more than Visa, Discover and American Express.

Although Mastercard is one of the world’s most recognizable brands, there is still a lot that people don’t know about the company and its role in the credit card landscape. We’ll tackle a handful of topics people often wonder about below.

1. First four digits of a Mastercard
2. Mastercard annual fee
3. Mastercard grace period
4. Mastercard benefits

First four digits of a Mastercard

All Mastercard credit card numbers begin with “5.” The next few numbers depend on which bank or credit union issues the Mastercard credit card in question. For example, a Mastercard credit card issued by Bank of America might have a card number with these digits first: 517572. But a Mastercard issued by Capital One might start with 549139.

It’s possible to decipher this because credit card numbers follow a general pattern. The first digit of a credit card number is called the Major Industry Identifier. It will tell you which network a card is on. Mastercard uses 5, while 4 is for Visa, 3 is for American Express and 6 is for Discover. The first six digits are called the Issuer/Bank Identification Number. They will tell you both the card network and card issuer. To learn more, check out our detailed guide about credit card numbers.
 

Mastercard annual fee

Mastercard credit card annual fees can be as low as $0 or as high as $450+, depending on the card and market conditions. But Mastercard does not assess any fees to credit card users directly. Annual fees are charged by the banks and credit unions that issue credit cards on the Mastercard network. As a result, Mastercard credit cards are no more likely to charge annual fees than Visa cards, for example.
 

Mastercard grace period

Most Mastercard credit cards have a grace period of 21-25 days, from when the account’s monthly statement becomes available until the due date for payment. The exact number of days varies by issuer, but the overall significance of a credit card’s grace period does not. Interest will not accrue during the grace period, if you always pay your full balance by the due date.

Carrying a balance beyond the due date results in the loss of the grace period. Payments then begin accruing interest right away. But cardholders can restore their grace period by paying their full balance due two months in a row.
 

Mastercard benefits

Unlike with rewards, rates and fees, credit card networks like Mastercard are directly responsible for many of the secondary benefits available to cardholders. But not all Mastercard credit cards have the same perks. Mastercard actually has three benefits tiers: standard, World and World Elite. Credit card issuers can decide which benefits to include on each of their Mastercard offers.

Standard Mastercard credit card benefits include $0 liability for unauthorized charges as well as perks such as rental car insurance, price protection, and an extended warranty benefit.

World Mastercard benefits include multiple types of travel insurance, purchase protection, and some shopping perks – on top of what a basic Mastercard would provide.

World Elite Mastercard benefits include everything you’d get on other Mastercard offers, plus access to unique experiences and special savings opportunities.

Taking full advantage of credit card perks can save you a lot of money and hassle, and it’s becoming easier for tech-savvy cardholders to do so. For instance, cardholders can now even explore their Mastercard credit card benefits in augmented reality in order to learn how to get more from the perks they’re entitled to but may not be using.

To identify the best Mastercard credit cards, WalletHub’s editors regularly compare all of the Mastercard offers from our database of 1,500+ credit cards. First, we calculate the average person’s expected savings with each card, by estimating how much a cardholder would earn in rewards or spend on interest charges and then subtracting relevant fees. We leverage consumer spending data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in doing so.

We also consider approval requirements and special perks to help group and ultimately rank-order the cards. This enables us to select the best Mastercard credit cards for rewards, business, bad credit and other popular categories.

WalletHub actively maintains a database of 1,500+ credit card offers, from which we select the best  Mastercard credit cards for different applicants as well as derive market-wide takeaways and trends. The underlying data is compiled from credit card company websites or provided directly by the credit card issuers. We also leverage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to develop cardholder profiles, used to estimate cards’ potential savings.