Credit One Bank just announced a new NASCAR credit card, and if you want to save yourself some time and skip my full review: it’s a lousy card. Don’t get it.
Introduction
Still here? Okay, here are the details: there are three flavors of this card, each targeted toward a different credit tier. The three tiers are “Excellent Credit”, “Average Credit”, and “Rebuilding Credit”, the last of which is also known as “Bad Credit”, but I guess you’re not supposed to say that when you’re marketing to people with bad rebuilding credit, so “rebuilding” it is!
The Excellent version comes with no annual fee, while the Average and Rebuilding ones come with annual fees of $35-$75 and $75-$99 respectively. Question: if your credit is truly average, should you be paying an annual fee for a card with no perks? The answer is no, you should not. Follow-up question: does the NASCAR credit card have any perks? The answer is no, it does not, or at least nothing that could justify a $35 annual fee.
Rewards
And on that one, let’s talk about rewards for this card, starting with the perks, or lack thereof. Here they are in their entirety, as described in the press release:
Credit One Bank NASCAR card members will benefit from exclusive discounts from retail partners such as Fanatics and NASCAR Racing Experience, the leading experiential racing company in North America. Throughout the season, Credit One Bank will be announcing more discounts and promotions from additional NASCAR partners.
Those perks are pretty vague. What sort of discounts? Are Fanatics and NASCAR Racing Experience the only two retail partners? Nobody outside of Credit One knows.
And then there are the cash back rewards on the card: you get 2% back on purchases made at NASCAR.com, and 1% back on everything else. The everything else applies only for the Excellent version; the other ones only get 1% on gas and automotive purchases. Not only are those rewards lame, but they also strikes me as a missed opportunity for Credit One: NASCAR has enough popularity that there ought to be a sizeable chunk of people with good credit who would gladly use a more high-end NASCAR credit card if it had a decent value proposition. Alas, the bank has decided not to make such a product available.
Why Isn’t There a Jeff Gordon Credit Card or a Dale Jr Credit Card?
While we’re on the subject of missed opportunities: why isn’t there a Jeff Gordon credit card or a Dale Jr Credit Card? It seems like a no-brainer, does it not?
Should you get the NASCAR credit card?
Certainly not. Maybe if you’re a diehard NASCAR fan who will pay any price to have a NASCAR piece of plastic in your wallet, or maybe if some of those purported retail discounts pan out this could be worthwhile for a few people… but you can do better. Much better.
If I were a credit analyst working for a major bank, and I saw this card on the credit report of someone who just applied to a good rewards card, I probably wouldn’t approve them.