BankAmericard®

Across the 41 cards in this catalog, APR floors cluster in the 17% to 20% range, and the highest is Capital One Platinum's flat 28.99%. BankAmericard's 14.99% floor is the lowest we track, a point and a half below the next card.

That gap is worth more than it looks. On a $3,000 balance carried for a year, the difference between 14.99% and a typical 18.49% floor is roughly a hundred dollars in interest — more than a 2% cash-back card would earn on $5,000 of spending. For anyone who carries a balance even occasionally, the interest rate is the rewards program.

The catch is that a range is a range: 14.99% is the floor, and the top of the range is 25.99%. The rate you get depends on your credit profile, and only the strongest applicants see the bottom of a range.

There is no rewards program, and as with Chase Slate that is coherent rather than cheap. The two functions genuinely conflict: a card optimized for low interest is sold to people who carry balances, and adding rewards to that customer's card produces a worse outcome for them, not a better one.

It also means the comparison is simple. If you pay in full every month, this card earns you nothing and any 2% card in this catalog is strictly better. If you don't, it's one of the best cards here and none of the cash-back rates come close to mattering.

At 14.99% this card has the lowest starting APR of the 41 we track - a point and a half below the next one down, Citi Diamond Preferred at 16.49%, and roughly three points below the crowd of rewards cards that begin at 17.49%. It is the only figure on this page that matters, because the card offers nothing else: no rewards programme, no points, no cash back.

That trade is easy to judge once you put a number on it. A balance carried for a year at 14.99% instead of 17.49% costs you two and a half percent less of it. On $4,000 that is about $100 a year - more than a 2% cash-back card would pay you on the same $4,000, and you would have to spend that money rather than merely owe it. If a balance is going to sit there, the low rate wins.

The range runs to 25.99%, and where you land inside it is set by your credit profile rather than chosen. That top end is still the lowest ceiling in this catalog - Chase's cards reach 29.99% and PNC Core reaches 30.24% - so even the worst outcome here beats the worst outcome almost anywhere else on this site.

What this card is not is a spending card. If you clear the balance every month the APR never touches you, and a 2% flat-rate card pays you for the same purchases. The reason to hold a BankAmericard is that you expect to owe money.

At 14.99% this card has the lowest starting APR of the 41 we track - a point and a half below the next one down, Citi Diamond Preferred at 16.49%, and roughly three points below the crowd of rewards cards that begin at 17.49%. It is the only figure on this page that matters, because the card offers nothing else: no rewards programme, no points, no cash back.

That trade is easy to judge once you put a number on it. A balance carried for a year at 14.99% instead of 17.49% costs you two and a half percent less of it. On $4,000 that is about $100 a year - more than a 2% cash-back card would pay you on the same $4,000, and you would have to spend that money rather than merely owe it. If a balance is going to sit there, the low rate wins.

The range runs to 25.99%, and where you land inside it is set by your credit profile rather than chosen. That top end is still the lowest ceiling in this catalog - Chase's cards reach 29.99% and PNC Core reaches 30.24% - so even the worst outcome here beats the worst outcome almost anywhere else on this site.

What this card is not is a spending card. If you clear the balance every month the APR never touches you, and a 2% flat-rate card pays you for the same purchases. The reason to hold a BankAmericard is that you expect to owe money.