Provident Financial, the UK’s biggest name in doorstep lending, has launched a new credit card aimed at people with a bad credit rating, or a low income. The card will feature an APR that could reach an eye-wateringly high 69%.

The cards will come with a low credit limit of up to £200, which is low by most cards’ standards, but with such a high interest rate it certainly wouldn’t be a good idea to carry a large balance on the card in any case.

Provident, who will be marketing the card under the Vanquis brand, say that the high rate reflects the fact that many of its customers are ‘high risk’ and would be refused cards by most other issuers, and that its card gives many more people access to the convenience of paying by plastic.

Rates of this level are however staggering, and if someone is regarded as a high enough risk to justify the APR then maybe they shouldn’t be extended credit at all?

People whith a genuine need for a credit card but poor credit ratings may prefer to look at the Capital One Classic card or Barclaycard Initial, which although still pretty expensive have much lower APRs than the Vanquis offering.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 15th, 2005 at 8:46 pm and is filed under New Cards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.