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The Best Credit Card Offers for 2020 and 2021

If you have a New Year’s resolution to get your finances in order, that may include finding the right credit card. If you have a high-interest card that doesn’t provide you with any rewards or benefits, you could be missing out.

The Top Credit Card Offers for 2020 and 2021.

Here are the top credit card offers for 2020 and 2021.

Discover-It Cash Back

If you want a simple credit card that pays you for your purchases, Discover-It is it. You earn 5% back on your purchases up to $1,500 each quarter. The reward categories change, but you always have options, and they are typically categories everyone spends in or specific stores everyone shops at (such as Amazon).

Discover also doubles the cashback you earn after your first year. In other words, you earn ‘free money’ if you keep your card in good standing for the year.

Citi Double Cash Card

Earn 1% back on all purchases and an additional 1% when you pay your bill. Even if you pay your balance over a few months, you still earn 1% of what you pay. So it totals out to 2% cashback as long as you don’t let interest charges take over your rewards.

The Citi Double Cash card doesn’t have a reward bonus like most cards, but it comes with a 0% balance transfer APR for 18 months. That’s a nice long period to pay off your balance before interest accrues.

Chase Freedom Unlimited

chase freedom unlimited

If you like tiered rewards, check out the Chase Freedom Unlimited card. There’s no annual fee, and you earn cashback year-round in a tiered manner.

It’s best for people who travel as you get the largest reward on travel purchases (5%). It also pays 3% back on restaurant purchases, 3% back at drugstores like CVS, and 1.5% back on all other purchases. So, no matter where you spend money, you’ll earn cashback.

Bank of America Cash Rewards Credit Card for Students

Students sometimes have a hard time finding a credit card that provides them any benefits besides a small credit line. The Bank of America card is a great place to start and it offers students rewards.

Students earn 3% cashback on a category that you choose, whether it’s groceries, dining out, or gas. Students can also earn 2% cashback on groceries, including Sam’s Club and Costco, and 1% back on everything else.

The 3% bonus category and 2% rewards can be used up to $2,500 per quarter, and then it falls to 1%, which is the perfect amount for students.

Look at the Credit Card Rewards you Need

Rewards Cards

Before you take just any credit card, determine your needs. What rewards will you use and what categories do you spend money in the most? Why not take advantage of what credit cards have to offer by finding the card that pays you back in ways you’ll use it and for purchases you already make?

If you aren’t sure which one is right for you, pull out your bank and credit card statements for the last year and total up your spending in each category to make the right choice.  

Discover “On Us” Program

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Today The Official Merchant Services Blog  will focus on an exclusive deal offered to merchants by Host Merchant Services, a second year of the Discover “On Us” plan, formerly the Add Discover On Discover promotion. This plan comes at just the right time for merchants as holiday shopping will increase their traffic and sales. This offer from Discover, through Host Merchant Services is bold and exciting. It essentially gives qualifying merchants a year of being able to process Discover payments at no cost. Discover “On Us” gives the merchants no fees when their customers swipe a Discover card. And they have this benefit for an entire year.

The Details of the Plan

To qualify for the Discover “On Us” program from Host Merchant Services, you must have not processed any Discover cards in the past six months of doing business. Discover card processing includes Discover, Diners Club International, BCcard, China Union Pay, JCB and DinaCard. That’s it. That’s all you need to qualify. Once you qualify it’s a series of easy steps to get the program started:

  1. Enroll in the program anytime before December 31st, 2013.
  2. Confirm your enrollment with a required test transaction.
  3. Update signage at your retail store (or on your website if you are an e-commerce only merchant).
  4. Inform your employees and actively promote Discover to your customers to start reaping the savings.

 

Once you’ve been verified you will receive written notice from Discover. Within 10 business days of your acceptance you’ll receive a welcome letter with free Discover signage and tips for increasing your sales with Discover.

Benefits of the Plan

This plan is really good for merchants that haven’t been accepting Discover cards. Every Discover transaction you process for 12 full months will cost you nothing  –– no limits, no exceptions. Coming right at the end of the year, this plan is the type of holiday shopping incentive that is extremely lucrative for merchants.

Durbin Amendment Works For This Too

In fact, one of the features of the Durbin Amendment can help Discover get added hype and promotional assistance from this Discover “On Us” plan. As Host Merchant Services pointed out in their Durbin Amendment analysis earlier this year, one of the key pieces of the legislation focuses on competition within the payment processing industry: “[The Durbin Amendment] seeks to stop major credit and debit card networks from imposing penalties on small businesses, merchants and government agencies. The law applies to banks with over $10 billion in assets and restricts these large banks and credit card companies from using their dominant market power to force merchants to accept anti-competitive restrictions. To put it simply, large credit card companies are no longer able to punish merchants for offering discounts to customers for using another card network; or discounts for using cash, check, debit card or gift card and loyalty cards; or set a minimum or maximum transaction amount for payment by card.”

So what this means is Discover can usher in this program –– which offers no transaction fees for a year –– to attract merchants, and those merchants seeing how much more of a savings this can provide them over other options can freely promote Discover over the competition, with no fear of punishment or penalty. Durbin lets a merchant promote the better deal for their business.

For More Information

This landmark offer lasts until December 31, 2013. The Discover “On Us” Program will extend 12 months of free Discover processing to merchants who qualify, even if implemented on December 31st, 2013, the merchant would be able to utilize the program through December 31st, 2014. If you are interested in finding out more about it, feel free to Contact Host Merchant Services.

Discover To Pay $200 Million For Deceptive Practices

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Today the Official Merchant Services Blog will investigate the more than $200 million dollar fine that the U.S. Government issued on Discover Bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) have ordered Discover to refund approximately $200 million to more than 3.5 million of its customers, as well as pay a $14 million civil penalty to the government. The order comes after the FDIC began investigating Discover last year for deceptive telemarketing practices and sales tactics used to sell consumers various credit card products, such as payment protection, credit score tracking, identity theft and wallet protection.

Consumers reported that these telemarketers would downplay key words during the calls and also used scripts that misled the customer about whether they would actually be paying for the product.  Some Discover customers thought the products were free because of the use of such words as “benefits.”

Some consumers asked for reading material on the products before purchasing them, however they found themselves being billed for the products before receiving the materials.  Some customers were even fully enrolled in the programs without permission, according to the FDIC and the CFPB.

The telemarketers also did not disclose eligibility requirements for certain payment protection benefits, such as exclusions for pre-existing medical conditions and certain employment limitations. Discover is not only required to pay the refunds and civil penalty, but also must make changes to its telemarketing strategies for the products involved.  The company must submit a compliance plan to the CFPB and FDIC for approval.

“Discover has worked hard over the past decade or so to reinvent its brand into one of a first class credit card,” David Johnson, principal with Strategic Vision, (Discover’s PR Company) told CRM Buyer. “This is not something consumers are likely to forget. It will become part of the Discover narrative.”

Unfortunately for Discover, I’m inclined to agree. This is not a story that is going to go away any time soon and we will be on top of any updates or appeals. While on the topic of Discover however, I find it necessary to remind our reader base and all merchants that the ‘Add Discover On Discover’ program is ending in the coming months, and you should know when you will start being charged for the service.  The program started back in 2011, and offered free Discover card processing to customers who could show they had not taken Discover cards for at least six months.  In this way, the program really targeted non-Discover Card merchants and was a strong effort to increase the usage of Discover in retail outlets.

Here’s a quick reference chart for the schedule:

Host Merchant Services continues to adhere to its customer service philosophy of transparency and education. We do not want any merchants confused or unaware of the fees they are charged on their statements. If you have any questions about this program or Interchange and its rates, please contact us.

How Does Credit Card Processing Work?

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Today The Official Merchant Services Blog gets extra visual with a step by step breakdown of how Credit Card Processing works.

This is the latest installment in The Official Merchant Services Blog’s Knowledge Base effort. We want to make the payment processing industry’s terms and buzzwords clear. We want to remove any and all confusion merchants might have about how the industry works. Host Merchant Services promises: the company delivers personal service and clarity. So we’re going to take some time to explain how everything works. This ongoing series is where we define industry related terms and slowly build up a knowledge base and as we get more and more of these completed, we’ll collect them in our resource archive for quick and easy access. Today we build off of our previous knowledge base entry on just credit cards. We noticed that we’ve been adding to this database for months now and kind of skipped over some of the most basic elements of the industry. So now that we’ve defined credit cards, we want to take you on a journey through credit card processing, detailing exactly how it happens.

CREDIT CARD PROCESSING

Host Merchant Services is able to guarantee its customers savings and the lowest rates possible. By understanding how credit card processing works, where the money gets made off of the transactions themselves and where those hidden fees actually are, you can gain some valuable insight into how Host Merchant Services is able to make its guarantee. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown that sheds light on where the fees from each transaction come from:

How Does Credit Card Processing Work?

The way credit card processing companies make money for themselves can sometimes be a confusing labyrinth where fees are hidden, percentages are tied to things not listed on statements and the deal you think you are getting isn’t the best deal you can actually get. Host Merchant Services is dedicated to giving its merchants the lowest price guaranteed, and the company strives to maintain transparency with no hidden fees. So take a walk with us and see behind the curtain as you learn exactly where the money is being made when you swipe a customer’s credit card.

Step One: A customer visits a store.

Step Two: Customer purchases $10 worth of merchandise.

Step Three: The customer swipes his credit card through a payment processing terminal such as a Hypercom T4205 from Equinox Payments to pay for the merchandise.

Step Four: The card reader recognizes who the customer is and contacts the bank that issued the credit card.

Step Five: The customer’s bank sends $10 to the merchant’s bank.

Step Six: Then the merchant’s bank deposits $9.80 to the merchant’s bank account.

Step Seven: That remaining 20 cents, a 2% fee, is taken from the $10 and given to the customer’s bank.

Step Eight: The customer’s bank then splits the 20 cents with the credit card company.*

* Depending on the specific company, country and merchant, the percentage can range from 1% to 6%. The amount the bank gets and the amount Visa gets is a negotiated deal. Also, Visa and MasterCard charge the banks an annual fee to be a part of their network in the first place.

Where The Money Gets Made

Credit card companies make money in a variety of ways. This graphic lists four of them.

Credit Card Companies make money in a variety of ways. Here are the four most common:

One: The most common way credit card companies make money is through fees, such as the annual fee, overlimit fee and past due fees.

Two: Another way credit card companies make money is through interest on revolving loans if the card balance is not paid in full each month.

Three: As explained above, the card issuer (the bank that issued the card and/or the issuer network, be it Visa, MasterCard, Discover) makes a percentage of each item you purchase from a merchant who accepts your credit card. The rates range from 1% to 6% for each purchase.

Four: The card issuer can also make money through ancillary avenues, such as selling your name to a mailing list or selling advertisements along with your monthly billing statement.

SOURCE: Information for this article was gathered from www.creditscore.net, the movie Superman III, Wikipedia and Authorize.net.

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Industry Terms: AVS

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This is the latest installment in The Official Merchant Services Blog’s Knowledge Base effort. We want to make the payment processing industry’s terms and buzzwords clear. We want to remove any and all confusion merchants might have about how the industry works. Host Merchant Services promises: the company delivers personal service and clarity. So we’re going to take some time to explain how everything works. This ongoing series is where we define industry related terms and slowly build up a knowledge base and as we get more and more of these completed, we’ll collect them in our resource archive for quick and easy access. Today’s term is the Address Verification System, or AVS.

The system was designed by card issuers to aid in the detection of suspicious credit card transaction activity, and verify that the cardholder’s address info matches what the banks have on file. The service is provided as part of a credit card authorization for mail order/telephone order transactions (MOTO) or Internet e-commerce transactions.  A code is received with an authorization result that determines the level of accuracy of the address match. This verification helps secure the most favorable interchange rates for the merchant.

Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express support this service, and when paired with a CVV confirmation the result is a secure, verified transaction. To verify a customer’s address, a merchant will need the cardholder’s billing ZIP code and the house or apartment number of the billing address.  The merchant does not need to enter in the street, city or state of the cardholder.  While AVS is not intended for use as absolute protection against suspicious transaction activity, it is an important step in securing non-face-to-face transactions. Host Merchant Services recommends to all merchants that they secure these types of orders with both AVS and CVV.