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Find the best 0% card for you

0% balance transfer cards are fantastic financial tools. You can transfer a credit card debt to a new card and then not pay any interest for as long as 25 months.

The only cost is a fee you pay when you make the transfer. 0% balance transfer cards are fantastic financial tools. You can transfer a credit card debt to a new card and then not pay any interest for as long as 25 months. The only cost is a fee you pay when you make the transfer.

But which card should you choose?

It can be a difficult decision as there’s no one card that’s clearly best in all circumstances.

So in this article we’re going to look at different debt scenarios and work out which card is the best solution for each scenario. Hopefully that will then help you decide which is the right credit card for you.

Scenario 1: You’ll need two years to pay off your debt

Let’s imagine that you have a £4000 debt on your card and you think you’ll need two years to pay it off.

In this scenario, the best option is to go for a card with a long 0% period. Currently the two cards with the two longest periods are the Halifax 25 Month Platinum Visa and the Barclaycard 25 Month Platinum Visa cards.

We’ve never seen cards before with 25-month 0% periods, so these are both very impressive products.

Of the two, Barclaycard is marginally more attractive because the balance transfer is lower at 2.9% whereas Halifax is charging 3%.

So if you transferred a £4000 debt to the Barclaycard, you’d have to pay a £116 fee.

That said, if you were 100% confident you could pay off the debt within 24 months, rather than 25, you could pay a lower fee with the Barclaycard 24 Month Platinum Visa card. The fee for this card is only 2.8% which would work out at £112 for the £4000 debt. 

There’s one other card in the table that’s well worth highlighting. It’s the Lloyds TSB Platinum MasterCard, which has a very attractive 1.5% fee. However, the interest-free period is shorter at 21 months, so you’ll need to pay off your debt a bit more quickly or accept that you’ll have to pay interest on the remaining debt after 21 months.

Our favourite card of this bunch is the 24-month Barclaycard thanks to the fact that it has a relatively low fee and still offers a very long interest-free period.

Here are the top card for this scenario:

► top Card: Halifax 25 Month Platinum Visa

Scenario 2: you’ll need a lot longer than 2 years to pay off your debt

Let’s say you still have a £4000 debt but it could take you as long as four years to pay off the debt.

The obvious solution is to go for a card with a long interest-free period and then hope that you can transfer the debt to another 0% card when the interest-free period ends.

Sadly, there’s no certainty you’ll be able to do this. You might be able to get a 0% card now but find that you can’t get one in two years’ time . That could be because your credit rating has deteriorated or because the credit card market changes and there are few 0% cards available.

Given there’s a chance that you may not be able to get another 0% card, you should probably go for the longest possible 0% period. So that's why the 25-month Halifax comes top.

► top Card: Halifax 25 Month Platinum Visa

Scenario 3: You can pay off your debt in less than a year

Let’s imagine you have a £2000 debt on a credit card and you’re confident that you can pay off that debt within a year.

Clearly, you don’t need to go for a card with a super-long 0% period. Instead you can go for a card with a shorter 0% period and a nice low fee.

The clear winner in this category is the Natwest Platinum Low BT Fee Credit Card. You’ll get 13 months to pay off your debt and you’ll only have to pay a 1% fee. That works out at just £20 for a £2000 debt

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Let’s look at all the top low-fee cards:

►Natwest Platinum Low BT Fee Credit Card

►Bank of Scotland Platinum Online MasterCard