With features such as interest free days and $0 annual fees, our team investigates whether it's possible to have a credit card which doesn't cost you a cent.
Recently we reviewed the Citibank Silver and may have implied it was designed by the work experience kid. We mean no offence to the work experience kid in question. We're sure they tried their best. However, that card shattered any illusion we previously held that the design* of a credit card was in any way an intelligent process.
So if the features of a card are determined by the marketing department and not by a team of mathematicians, it's possible there exists a card which has both an interest free period and a $0 annual fee. In theory, you could make purchases on such a card, pay them off before the expiration of the interest free period (avoiding fees for cash advances, late payments etc) and never pay a cent to the bank. Hell, it may even have a rewards program, in which case you would technically be making money off of it.
I can't lose - I have a system...
Usually $0 annual fee and interest free periods are mutually exclusive features - if a card has an interest free period, it usually has some kind of annual fee and $0 annual fee credit cards usually don't have an interest free period. So we were searching for a card which had both. Our research team worked diligently, carefully analysing the product offerings of hundreds of Australian financial institutions. Actually, it was one guy in his lunch break doing Google searches, but we found some anyway:
Note: we don't promise these cards are 'free'. Some might charge fees for additional cards, card replacements, withdrawing money overseas or for certain types of transactions. Read the product disclosure statement carefully, make sure you understand and agree with the full terms and conditions and consider seeking advice from a financial planner before applying.
* By design we mean the selection of features such as interest rate, annual fee etc and not the shape of the actual card, although we here at IWACC continue to advocate for the spherical credit card.
