Falling Rates Seen on Prevalent Credit Card Types

By Stephen Mazeika

Interest Rate Decreases Follow Recent Economic Trends
 

In a tough economy where money is tight, consumers need all of the good news that they can get, and steady interest rate decreases lately might be just what the doctor ordered.

These recent trends have been noted by Bankrate.com, a site that surveys the 10 largest bank and thrift institutions in the 10 largest US cities to determine averages.

Low-interest cards
 

Over the last few weeks, rates on low interest cards have had APR slips from 11.45-11.42%. These cards are typically available for customers with good and excellent credit scores and payment histories.

Balance-transfer cards
 

Balance transfer cards allow consumer consolidation of debt from one or more cards and can sometimes include low introductory rates, but because of the nature of the service they provide they often carry higher rates than other card types. According to Bankrate, these rates on average have dropped from 13.16-13.07% over the last few weeks.

Cash back cards
 

Cash back cards are usually only available to customers with better than average credit ratings. These cards feature cash and other reward incentives to those that meet the stricter criteria. Recently, these customers have seen rate decreases from 13.66-13.57%.

Overall APR
 

Bankrate calculated the overall average APR decrease for all variable rate cards. The overall average decrease was 11.07-11.04%. Although these may appear to be subtle decreases, this is still good news for consumers, and if these trends continue Americans may be able to save more money with lower monthly payments.