Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit Review

The Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit is designed for anyone with poor credit who wants a rewards credit card, without having to pay a security deposit.

The 1 percent cashback on eligible purchases, however, might not be enough to offset the high fees and the lack of a guaranteed grace period (we’ll explain this further on).

The Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit has high APR rates and fees. It makes up for it with a cashback program that you don’t see very often at this credit level.

The Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit stands out because it offers 1 percent cashback on eligible gas, grocery purchases, and communication services like mobile phone, internet, cable and satellite TV services (terms apply), which is unusual among credit cards for borrowers with poor credit. If you’re not sure what your credit score is, use some apps and services that can provide you free credit reports and scores.

Using the Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit you can earn 1 percent cashback on eligible purchases.

Credit One Bank credit cards are generally designed for borrowers with sub-standard credit scores who don’t want to want to provide a security deposit to get a credit card. The interest rates are quite high and you might not qualify for a grace period. This means that you might start being charged interest on your purchases from the day you make them so there’s no way to avoid paying interest.

The Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit does offer borrowers with poor credit the opportunity to rebuild their credit through the credit monitoring tools. Credit One Bank reports to all three major credit bureaus about your credit card behavior so that you can rehabilitate your credit rating. The card also extends the vanity option of paying a premium fee to choose your own design for your credit card.

The Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit gives you a minimum starting credit line of $300, but this is immediately dropped to $225 because your annual fee is taken off your credit limit. Credit One Bank does raise your credit limit periodically and you can request an increase via the app or the website at any time.

Although the Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit offers the 1 percent cashback reward, Credit One Bank doesn’t offer a number of practical credit card perks credit card users might have wanted. Credit One Bank cards generally don’t include extended warranty purchase protection, for example. There’s also no travel assistance or roadside protection, offerings which are usually available with other secured credit cards.

Cashback

Earn 1 percent cashback on all purchases with the Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit.

The biggest reward offered by the Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit is the 1 percent cashback on eligible gas, grocery purchases, mobile phone service, internet, cable and satellite TV services, terms apply. Credit One Bank applies your cashback as statement credit to offset your next credit card bill.

You can earn cashback at any number of places, including some gas stations and grocery stores. Depending on your providers, you can also earn cashback from your internet, cable and satellite TV bills, and mobile phone bills, which gives you plenty of opportunities to grow your cashback.

Account Alerts

With the Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit you can get email and text notifications to keep on top of your account. Credit One Bank extends a helping hand to borrowers by making it easy to set up account notifications about payments that are due or have been paid.

This way you won’t end up paying extra interest because you forgot a payment. You can choose the settings for email or text alerts via the website or the mobile banking app.

Fraud Protection

Credit One Bank offers $0 fraud liability and account monitoring to keep you safe. Security is always my number one concern, so I couldn’t recommend the Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit if it didn’t have real fraud protection.

Credit One Bank promises zero fraud liability on all its credit cards, so if you card is lost or stolen or used without your permission, you won’t be held responsible for the charges.

Together with Visa®, Credit One Bank also monitors your account for suspicious activity and will pause an unusual looking transaction to verify it with you before allowing it through.

Digital Banking Tools

The Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit offers a mobile banking app, mobile-optimized website and Apple Pay contactless payments.

The Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit makes it easy to manage your account by offering borrowers a mobile banking app and a mobile-optimized website. You can use either the app or the website to make payments, track your spending, and change your settings.

The Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit also works with Apple Pay so that you can enjoy contactless payments. NFC payments are springing up everywhere so the ability to join in is quite important.

Grace Period

I alluded to this earlier, but I want to take some more time to discuss this card’s grace period. Most credit cards automatically give the user a grace period, charging interest (APR) only on the unpaid balance at the end of the month. That is, as long as you’re paying off your balance in full and on time, you’ll never have to worry about getting charged interest.

This allows us at Money Under 30 to sometimes recommend cards with high APRs, with the caveat that the user must be vigilant about paying off their balance.

Credit One Bank doesn’t guarantee you a grace period at all. That is, you’ll only find out if you have a grace period once you’ve applied and been accepted for the card.

That means you might find yourself holding a card with a high APR that you can’t avoid paying. This is one of the main drawbacks of the Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa Credit Card.

Credit One Bank tries to make up for it with a rare cashback program and no security deposit, which are both valuable in their own right, especially for cards available to people with Poor credit.

Rates and Fees

With high APR, high fees, and interest charged from the posting date, the Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa Credit Card is an expensive credit card.

Although the Credit One Bank® promotes its usefulness in helping rebuild credit scores, with a high APR, high fees, and no guaranteed grace period, the Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit might end up actually hurting it.

The annual fee of $75 for the first year. After that, $99 annually ($8.25 per month) for the first year is taken straight out of your credit limit, which means that you might already owe money on this card before you even make any purchases with it. After the first year the annual fee may be billed in monthly installments, rather than annually, which means that you need to keep an eye on your card and be quick to pay off the charge every month as soon as it appears or you’ll be charged interest on that, too.

The Credit One Bank® Platinum Visa® for Rebuilding Credit doesn’t offer any $0 balance transfer window, but that doesn’t really matter because the rates are so high you wouldn’t want to transfer your balance to this card.