Fixed Apr For Life On Balances Transfer Cards

0% Balance Transfer For Life Of Balance? - Credit Card Forum

Q: How can I get a credit card balance transfer for life?

A: Last decade, many major credit card companies would run balance transfer offers that gave zero percent for the lifetime of the balance. These promotions weren’t extremely common but they could be found with a little research.

Then of course the financial crash happened near the end of the decade, followed by the long recession. During that time the 0% balance transfer for life card offers disappeared. Despite the recovery and the fact that we’re in 2011, these lifetime 0% offers still haven’t came back.

Although a balance transfer for life is not an option anymore, there are several long term 0% offers currently available. Check out our sponsored listing below to see the current offers:

A lot of times I get asked if the 0% lifetime credit cards will ever come back and I believe the answer is no. Here’s why…

For starters, they never really existed! Before the Credit Card Act of 2009 went into effect, banks pretty much had the ability to raise rates on customers whenever they wanted to. So when you snagged a credit card balance transfer for life deal, there was really no guarantee in place that it had to be honored.

Creditors would use excuses like late payments or changes to your credit report as justification for raising your rate. When that didn’t work, some would raise the minimum payment amount up to 5% of the balance per month for accounts that weren’t paying down fast enough.

Now that the credit card reform is in effect, it’s a heck of a lot harder for creditors to raise your interest rate. For that reason it’s unlikely we will see low interest fixed APR lifetime balance transfer offers again… because then the banks would actually have to follow through and honor them!

The reform leveled the playing field Before the reform, cardholders with bad credit and high interest rates were basically subsidizing the credit card deals that people with great credit had access too, such as zero percent balance transfer offers.

Those balance transfer for life credit cards were often big money losers for the banks (especially when used by rate surfers) but the 20% to 30% APR and late fees paid by other cardholders would make up for it.

But now that the playing field has been leveled, those with both good and bad credit have to be treated equally in many aspects. Therefore those balance transfer for life offers just don’t make financial sense for the creditors to do anymore.