The HSN Store Card is not a good option for most people. The card’s strengths are its $0 annual fee, small initial bonus, and interest-free financing promotion, along with the fact that you can get approved with just fair credit. 

That might sound pretty good, but store cards generally have $0 fees and accept applicants with fair credit. Plus, the HSN Store Card doesn’t give you rewards on purchases, and the financing promotion can really come back to bite you if you’re not careful. 

4 Key Things to Know About the HSN Card

No ongoing rewards.

Sure, you can get $15+ off your first purchase with the HSN Credit Card. But the fact that you won’t earn points or cash back on every purchase certainly is not standard for a store card. The best retailer-affiliated credit cards offer 5% back on all purchases, after all. And that’s in addition to a first-purchase discount of at least 10%.

As a result, the HSN Card definitely isn’t the right choice for shoppers who plan to pay for their purchases in full by the monthly due date.
 

Dangerous financing.

Don’t mess around with the HSN Credit Card’s 0% intro APR if you have good or excellent credit. For one thing, it only lasts for up to 18 months. People with good credit or better can get 0% interest for as long as 21 months from other offers. And those superior 0% cards don’t use a dangerous feature called deferred interest, which the HSN Card unfortunately does.

Deferred interest allows a card’s regular APR to retroactively apply to your original purchase amount, as if the 0% offer never existed. That can happen if you don’t repay your full balance by the end of the intro period, and it would be extremely expensive considering how high the card’s regular APR is.  

Things aren’t as clear cut for people with fair credit because few general-purpose 0% cards are currently available to them. If you’re in that position, the HSN Credit Card’s 0% offer could help you save money. But you have to be extremely careful to pay on time and on schedule. We recommend using a credit card calculator if you decide to take this route.
 

Standard store card features.

The Home Shopping Network Credit Card is like nearly every other store card in the sense that it is available to people with fair credit or better and does not charge an annual fee. In other words, those aren’t unique terms worthy of praise or extra attention.

Nevertheless, the lack of an annual fee makes the HSN Card about $27.85 per year cheaper than the average credit card overall, according to WalletHub’s latest Credit Card Landscape Report. And its fair-credit requirement allows the card to be of some benefit, at least as far as cost-effective credit building is concerned. After all, there’s not much in this offer to entice people with good or excellent credit.

If you don’t know where you stand at the moment, you can check your latest credit score for free here on WalletHub.
 

Better alternatives available.

You’ll be able to save a lot more money by using one of our editors’ best rewards credit cards instead of the HSN Credit Card. There are options for 0% financing and rewards.