First ever credit card - please help!

jason1231972

Fingerbobs wrote: »

My experience is opposite to this. I haven't had a new Visa card for several years, and just recently closed the last Visa card I had (Nationwide). All my cards are now Mastercard, and looking back through my stack of old cards, all except the Nationwide ones were Mastercard.

Incidentally, I was recently in Amsterdam, and was surprised by the number of places that just don't accept any credit cards. I've got used to being able to use credit cards virtually everywhere, so finding that so many places in a capital city didn't accept them was quite a shock.

Back in the day, all mine seemed to be Mastercard, yet when I have acquired new accounts over the years, they've been Visa?

Surprised, re: Amsterdam. I go about once a year and have never noticed this. Mind you, there's a lot of small independent shops there. Over the past few years I've noticed 'chipknip' signs most everywhere, indicating that the retailer is on the Dutch version of chip & pin (how cutting edge!). I only noticed because I find the word 'chipknip' quite humourous, for some reason!

Maestro.

The trend I am seeing is that most credit cards, especially prime cards, are MC, its rarer to see a prime Visa card, most subprime cards are Visa and almost all debit cards are Visa.

Cashback cards tend to be MC too? :huh:

jason1231972

Hm, I was going on my own experience and assumed it's the same across the market, which appears to be partly right, partly wrong.

Upon some research, it doesn't seem to have owt to do with interest rates/prime/subprime amongst banks' credit cards, it just seems to be a bank preference.

Here's what's on offer by some of the main banks I could think of (some banks obviously being part of the same business group). I've taken all these to be 'prime' lenders, though APRs and criteria obviously differ somewhat:

Lloyds - MC
Santander - MC
Natwest - MC
Halifax - MC
RBS - MC
Yorkshire Bank - MC
Nationwide -Visa
Barclays - Visa
Co-Op - Visa
First Direct - Visa
HSBC - Visa

'Branded' cards attached to no bank (though they're obviously all underwritten by one bank or another!!) tend to go towards prime MC, subprime Visa, though there's a couple of anomalies:

Just a selection...

Aqua - subprime MC
Sainsburys, M&S, Tesco, etc. - prime MC
Post Office - prime MC
MBNA - prime Visa for MBNA, or prime MC for Virgin
The AA - prime Visa
Capital One - mixture of Visa/MC. MC prime, Visa subprime
Aquis - subprime Visa
Vanquis - subprime Visa