Platinum Zero® Secured Visa® Credit Card from Applied Bank®

Wow this is strange. You have to give them your contact info before they let you see the Schumer's Box. So I put in some fake stuff and got to see it.

You have to give them $500 to open the deposit account, which earns 0% interest. Then it's $9.95 a month maintenance on the account.

Here's the fees:

- Monthly Maintenance Fee $9.95 ($119.40 Annually)

- Minimum Finance Charge $0.50

- Foreign Currency Fee 1% of any transaction made in a foreign currency

- Cash Advance Fee: The greater of $5.00 or 5% of each Cash Advance which includes, but is not limited to, ATM and convenience check usage; Late Payment Fee: $32 or $35 (if your credit limit is greater than $1000); Overlimit Fee: $32 or $35 (if your credit limit is greater than $1000).

Deposit Account Information and Disclosures: The Deposit Account will not pay interest. The minimum balance required to open the Deposit Account is $500.

thanks toofar, you did a good thing exposing those crooks

This is a Secured Credit card...

The Deposit they Require will be your Credit limit for this card. It will be returned to you after the card is payed off and closed.

Secured Credit Cards are meant to help people with bad credit, by building credit history.

Some Secured Credit Cards turn into Unsecured credit cards after 12-18 Months of payment. (Unsecured means you get your deposit back and keep the card)

They're not crooks. They are offering a service to those that have truly horrible credit. That being said, there are better secured cards out there, in my opinion. But, if you've literally tried everywhere else and have been repeatedly denied, at least this company will give you something. Keep a secured card for about a year, get a few cards from other issuers that don't have annual fees, and then either upgrade your secured card to an unsecured card or close the account.

I checked this one out too, when it was reviewed as a number one pick on another site. When I checked it out the terms for the card had changed from those on the reviewing site. Initially it looked better, but then I saw all the details on the terms link (which is on the second page and very small, the fees are horrible. If you plan on running a large balance on the card from month to month, it may not be too bad at the 0% interest, but that won't help people build credit up as quickly as charging 10-30% of the available balance and paying it off will (no interest fees anyway if you use it that way). If you need a secured card to build credit try Public Savings or Orchard, they have considerably better terms that are clearly spelled out.