subject: How To Balance Your Credit Card Transfers [print this page] According to the British Banking Association, Britons are now transferring more balance between credit cards than ever before.
The association doesn't release figures on the kind of cards that are being transferred from and to but it's a safe bet to assume that most consumers using this facility are moving from a high rate of interest to a low one.
Balance transfers are seen as the good guys of the credit card world: they decrease debt, people think, just as fervently as other credit cards aim to increase it.
To view products in this way during any credible credit card comparison is a nonsense, however.
All credit card companies are out to make money whether they're selling 0% balance transfer credit cards or some other sort of financial product.
Does that mean that balance transfers aren't worth it, that they're a scam? No, it just means that they're not always worth it, they're not a financial magic wand that can be waved over finances to make them ok: they're much more complex than that and you have to make your transfers balance.
For one thing, for example, there are balance transfer fees.
A standard rate card - like the Virgin Money credit card - will have a balance transfer fee of around 3% of the balance to be transferred.
This should be taken into account when working out how long the person doing the transfer needs to pay off the debt in full.
That's the second problem with most transfers and where many users of plastic fall down.
Fail to pay back the debt in full during an introductory period and within a few months any interest you could have avoided will be wiped out by new interest payments.
Standard rates on transfer cards aren't high for nothing and this is another way in which this transaction can become seriously unbalanced in favour of a card provider.
