Purchase credit cards

APR stands for annual percentage rate, and it represents the total cost of the loan – including the interest you’ll pay as well as any additional fees and charges.

0% interest purchase credit cards are only available to people over 18 years old, with a UK bank account, permanent UK address and a regular income. 

If you miss a repayment on your 0% interest purchase credit card, you’ll likely lose your 0% interest rate – which means you’ll be put on your lender’s standard variable instead, which is usually much higher. You may also have to pay a fee or charge, depending on your lender.

If you want to increase your credit limit you can contact your lender and ask them to raise it, but you should only do this once you’ve used your card for a while and demonstrated that you can borrow and repay money sensibly.

Your lender may offer a credit limit increase if you’ve been with them for a long period of time, but you don’t always have to accept – you can ask them for a smaller increase, or reject it altogether.

If you’re applying for a credit card, you might be able to find a better deal if you look through offers from different providers before taking one out. With MoneySuperMarket you’ll be able to search through multiple credit cards and compare them by a range of factors, including their interest rates and any benefits and rewards they come with.

All you need to do is answer a few questions about yourself and your financial situation, and our Eligibility Checker will show your chances of being accepted for different credit cards. This won’t affect your credit score, so you can run a check without any worries.

Once you know which card you want, you can normally apply by phone, online, or in person if the provider has a high street branch. However, when you do apply, the provider will usually run a hard credit check – which will show up on your credit report – to confirm whether they’ll give you the card. If you’re accepted they’ll tell you your credit limit and interest rate, and soon you’ll be ready to start using your credit card.

MoneySuperMarket gives you lots of clever ways to save a lot, by doing very little.

• Take control of your credit score by checking and improving it for free with Credit Monitor
• Never overpay again with Energy Monitor, our energy monitoring service
• Over 50 ways to Get Money Calm

So how do we make our money? In a nutshell, when you use us to buy a product, we get a reward from the company you’re buying from.

But you might have other questions. Do we provide access to all the companies operating in a given market? Do we have commercial relationships or ownership ties that might make us feature one company above another?

We commit to providing you with clear and informative answers on all points such as this, so we have gathered the relevant information on this page.