Capital One Wants You to Build Your Own Credit Card

Filed in archive Credit on November 27, 2007

This isn't earth-shattering, but it's kind of cool. Capital One has introduced an online "Card Lab" in which you can build your own credit card, choosing the features that are most important to you while leaving off things you don't care about. In so doing, you can make tradeoffs that give you more of what you want in a credit card.

Here's how it works: First, at the Card Lab site, you get 6 categories to make choices in: Basic Rewards, Additional Rewards, Introductory APR on Purchases, APR on Transfers, Annual percentage rate (APR) and Annual Fee.

Let's say you're big into rewards, so you choose the 1.25% cash back option. As soon as you make this choice, other choices go away. You can no longer get the lowest APR Capital One offers and you can't get a balance transfer deal, but you're getting the reward you want, and you can still get a 0% introductory offer. From there you can make more choices. Say you want a 0% intro APR until next August. Make that choice and then it tells you your only remaining choice on rate is 14.9%. Forgo the 0% intro and take the 13.9% rate if you know you'll pay your balance every month anyway. (This all assumes you are a person with excellent credit. The "Lab" offers slightly different options depending on your credit.) Once you have the card the way you want it, you give all your pertinent info and they send it out to you.

Another example: Say you want a low interest rate, but you'd still like some rewards. Doing a little experimentation, you can find that the lowest rate you can find and still qualify for rewards is 10.9%, which gives you a one mile per dollar reward option as well as 0% offers on introductory purchases and balance transfers until next August.

You can also find out that for $79 per year you can get a reward program that pays two points per dollar.

All depends on what you want.

I think some people will like this. Even if you don't get the card, it's fun to play with. Card companies have had the ability to send out all different variations on rates and rewards for the same basic card for a long time, so it's strange that this is the first time we're seeing this done (at least in the United States).

Give it a look: Capital One Card Lab