Full review

Merrick Bank offers three credit card products: the Merrick Bank Double Your Line™ Visa® Credit Card, the Merrick Bank Secured Visa® Card and the Merrick Bank Visa® Card. Unlike points or cash back cards, these cards do not feature any rewards. Instead, they are focused on customers with limited access to credit or those looking to improve their credit histories. While Merrick Bank does report your payment history to all three credit bureaus—which helps cardholders build credit—it is not worth paying the exorbitant fees for this service. 

Details of pros

Potential to double your credit limit quickly: Everyone loves to be rewarded for good behavior, and it can be a pain to have a low credit line.

 If your credit limit is initially $550, just make timely payments for seven months and it will automatically increase to $1,100, at no additional cost to you. Not only will you have to worry less about maxing out your card, but you’re less likely to negatively affect your credit utilization ratio—an important credit scoring metric. (More on this below.) 

Free access to your FICO score: Free credit scores have become a ubiquitous benefit on mainstream cards, but aren’t nearly as common on cards for consumers with bad credit, oddly enough. Plus, some card issuers offer scores that are less widely used by lenders, such as the VantageScore. The FICO score is the most popular score with lenders and is particularly good to monitor as you rebuild your credit. 

Details of cons

High annual fee for some borrowers: If you’re offered a card carrying an annual fee, it will be as high as $72. Among unsecured cards in this category, $72 is on the higher end, though there are cards on the market charging as much as $99. (If you’re charged $72, it will be spread out after the first year, at $6 a month.)2  

Account set-up fee for some borrowers: Depending on the offer, you may be charged a one-time fee of up to $75 just to get your account started. With the annual fee, that means you could wind up owing $147 before you’ve even used your card. Be aware that any annual or set-up fees eat into the credit limit initially available to you. (So if you’re approved for a $550 credit limit, it could actually be $403 at first.) 

Steep APR: If you have bad credit, you’ll likely have to pay a significant amount to carry a balance on any card. But this card’s highest interest rate is expensive by any standard, outdoing several competing cards. Such a high APR could make it much harder for you to afford your card’s minimum payments, putting you at risk of falling behind on your bills.

Other Things To Consider

2% Foreign-Transaction Fee: This card does not make a good international travel companion or means of paying for purchases from foreign-based merchants. That’s because it charges a 2% foreign-transaction fee, which is more than the market average but not a fee anyone should feel resigned to pay.

Relatively Low Regular APR: The Merrick Bank Card’s 17.45% (V) regular APR is comparable to the secured-card average of 17.28%, according to WalletHub’s latest Credit Card Landscape Report, but that doesn’t make carrying a balance a good idea. After all, you fronted the money for your credit line, so carrying a balance from month to month will be tantamount to loaning yourself money at a nearly 18% interest rate. Would you really charge yourself that much?

Visa Benefits: The fact that the Merrick Card is on the Visa network means you can use it to make purchases pretty much anywhere plastic is accepted. You’ll also enjoy network benefits such as rental-car insurance. 

Balance Transfers Prohibited: Balance transfers generally shouldn’t be of much interest to secured-card users for one simple reason: A transferred balance can’t exceed your credit limit, which is prepaid with a secured card. And if you had the money to cover the balance to begin with, you’d just pay off the debt directly. But it’s still worth mentioning that this type of transaction cannot be performed with the Merrick Bank Secured Card because that’s not the case for all secured cards. 

Off-Limits To Some Bad-Credit Applicants: Secured cards generally are the easiest credit cards to get, as their refundable security deposit erases the risk typically associated with lending to people with bad credit. Secured cards don’t offer guaranteed approval, though. There’s always some sort of qualification that must be met, whether it’s simply a valid Social Security number or a certain type of credit history. Merrick Bank’s line in the sand is that you can’t have an undischarged bankruptcy pending or unpaid tax debts.