Best Secured Credit Cards

 

Methodology for Selecting the Best Secured Cards

WalletHub’s editors regularly compare dozens of secured credit cards based on their overall two-year cost, incorporating features such as fees, security deposit requirements, rewards, interest rates, and other WalletHub Rating components. The lower a secured card’s two-year cost, the better. It’s important to keep expenses low when you’re rebuilding credit, and paying extra usually won’t get you better rewards at this point in your credit career.

How Two-Year Cost Is Calculated

Two-year cost is used to approximate the monetary value of cards for better comparison and is calculated by combining annual and monthly membership fees over two years, adding any one-time fees or other fees (like balance transfer fees), adding any interest costs, and subtracting rewards. Negative amounts indicate savings. When fees or other terms are presented as a range, we use the midpoint for scoring purposes.

Rewards bonuses and credits have been taken into account for two-year cost calculations. However, bonuses applicable to only a very small portion of cardholders are not considered. For example, credits and bonuses awarded for spending or redeeming rewards through a company portal with non-co-branded cards have not been taken into account. Similarly, bonuses and credits related to spending with specific merchants using a non-co-branded card have not been taken into account (for example, if Card A offers credits with DoorDash, this feature would not be factored into calculations because it is hard to assess how many cardholders would use the benefit or exactly how much value they'd get from it).
   

Cardholder Spending Profiles

Given that different users have different goals and are likely to use their credit cards differently, we identified spending profiles that are representative of different users’ financial priorities and behaviors. For each cardholder type, we have assumed a specific amount of monthly spending by purchase type (e.g., groceries, gas, etc.), as well as an average balance, balance transfer amount, amount spent on large purchases and average monthly payment. Spending assumptions are based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for consumers and PEX data for businesses.

Sources

WalletHub actively maintains a database of 1,500+ credit card offers, from which we select the best secured 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.