How to Lower the Interest Rate on a Credit Card

by Helen H. content manager

Nowadays it is rather difficult to find credit cards with a low-interest rate. Banks don’t want to offer that option to their clients, so most of us are tied to the high-interest rate credit card because of no other options. This makes the problem even worse. Instead of helping people get out of their financial hardship, credit cards pushes them even further into a debt hole. In many cases loans, like the best personal loans in Australia, compare favorably with credit cards.

So, what’s the right way of using your credit card without having to overpay a giant interest rate? To make it possible, just follow these 5 recommendations below.

Prepare for the conversation

To make your bank approve a lower interest rate, you need to make a little homework before. This is how you do it: you review some better deals from your bank’s competitors. Banks understand they can lose a client so they more likely make concessions.

One more tip: work with your oldest credit card for now. Banks and any other financial organizations value their loyal clients and stay more flexible to their inquiries.

Call the bank and ask

On the back of your credit card or on your statement there is a telephone number of the bank’s customer service you can reach to. Most people consider customer service exists only when your card is frozen, stolen, lost or in other unpleasant situations but it’s wrong. Operators from customer service can give you a lower percentage of your credit card interest rate if you simply call and ask. They’ll most likely accept your request if you are a diligent payer.

Even if you are denied, stay polite during a conversation. Otherwise, the call would end pretty quickly and your next tries to call may have as little success as now.

Ask how to be qualified for a lower interest rate

There is a chance you may get a refusal, but you can always ask why you are not qualified for the lower rate at the moment. For instance, your payments were late, so you might want to be diligent in making payments for the next several months to improve your credit situation. It happens that even after this period you are still not eligible. What’s important is to be persistent and make at least one call in several weeks with the same request over again.

Don’t stop asking after they lower your rate one time

So the thing is, you don’t have to stop on your first successful try. You can and you should call anytime soon to win even lower credit card rate. It’s possible and you need to use this opportunity to lower your interest rate to a minimum. The chances to lessen your rate are even higher if there is a current tendency for a low interest in the economy.

Show diligence in paying full and on time

Generally, if you always make on-time payments, you won’t have issues getting a lower interest rate. Neglecting costs and forgetting to pay on time will be a red flag for your creditor. In case there was that one late payment that you paid off quickly after, you can still call the customer service and remove an increased interest rate from your account. Stay friendly and polite, though!

As you can see for yourself, to reduce interest rate you don’t have to make any serious actions. All you need to do is be a diligent credit card payer (and you have to be one anyway), make a few calls to your bank’s customer service representative and politely ask.