Six months after its arrival in Ireland, the US credit card company, MBNA International is stepping up its sales and promotion campaign with a massive mail shot of existing credit card holders and telephone "cold calling". Its biggest selling point: no annual fee and an 18.9 per cent APR. If you transfer your existing account MBNA will also fix your first six months APR at just 13.9 per cent.
MBNA's interest rates look very good indeed against the main Irish credit card rates: AIB Visa tops the cost list with an APR of 25.64 per cent; Bank of Ireland's Visa and MasterCard charge 25.5 per cent APR, while Ulster Bank and TSB charge its customers 24.6 and 23.1 per cent APR respectively. National Irish Bank, at 22.4 per cent APR has consistently offered the cheapest interest rate of the major clearing banks.
The monthly minimum amount that you must clear with the MBNA Visa card is also lower than the other major players - 3 per cent instead of 5 per cent and credit limits for ordinary cardholders (as opposed to higher net worth clients) can be as high as £15,000. A variety of travel insurances are automatically included, but like most other credit card offers these apply only while you are travelling and not at your business or holiday destination.
The Irish banks, in an effort to maintain their market share, insist that the service they provide is superior to MBNA which has its administration headquarters in Britain. But MBNA's free 24-hour worldwide telephone service if you have any problems should sort out most complaints - it isn't as if the average existing credit card holder develops any kind of personal relationship with its existing card provider. Credit card complaints are the kind that tend to get settled by phone or letter - or increasingly, by FAX and e-mail.
