Santander Sphere Review – $100 Bonus & 24 Month 0% APR

Usually I talk about weird or unusual credit cards every Wednesday, there are so many I want to talk about so I thought why not sprinkle in some throughout the week. You can view more posts in this series here.

Santander is the fourth largest bank in the world when sorted by profit. They are relatively new in the US and are trying to rapidly gain market share. Whenever companies do this, it’s usually a boon time for consumers as they hand out all sorts of bonuses to attract consumers.

At the moment Santander is offering you $20 per month with their Extra20 savings & checking products, in my opinion this is the best bank bonus on offer at the moment. They also have the Santander Bravo credit card which now comes with a $100 bonus and earns at 3% on gas station, supermarket and restaurant purchases (limit of 15,000 points/quarter).

Santander Sphere Basics

They also have a credit card that I haven’t talked about before, called the Santander Sphere. This card offers a $100 bonus (10,000 points) when you spend $1,000 or more in net purchases within three months. It also comes with a 0% introductory APR on balance transfers for 24 months. There are a number of “gotchas” with that introductory APR offer though, we’ve listed these below.

0% APR Gotchas

  • There is a balance transfer fee. Santander charge a balance transfer fee of $10 or 4% (which ever is higher) for every balance transfer.
  • Introductory APR of 0% only applies to balance transfers. If you make a purchase, it will not receive the introductory APR 0%.
  • Late payment will cancel your 0% rate. If you make a late payment they reserve the right to cancel your introductory APR period and then charge a penalty APR of 29.99%.
  • Only balance transfers made within the first 90 days attract this 0% rate. If you make a balance transfer outside of this period it will attract the usual rate of 12.99% to 24.99% depending on your credit worthiness.
  • There is no grace period on balance transfers. This means if you make a balance transfer outside of the introductory APR period, you will be charged interest instantly. It also means that if you make a purchase after taking a balance transfer and do not pay in full, you will be charged interest instantly.

Final Thoughts

The sign up bonus on this card is only $100, there are a lot of higher cash sign up bonuses out there. This card also earns 1x point on all purchases (you should be using a card that earns at least 2% cash back on non-category spending).

It’s not worth considering the balance transfer option, the balance transfer fee makes it pointless to even consider before even thinking about the other gotchas. I hate most balance transfer and introductory APR offers because they are designed to take advantage of uninformed consumers.

If Santander wants to gain any market share in the crowded credit card market, they are going to have to do a lot better than their current two offerings.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

4 Comments
newest
oldest most voted

Jan B
Jan B (@guest_86965)
March 11, 2015 12:32

So important to notice that balance transfer fee. I receive offers all the time and notice the fees of 4 and 5 percent are occurring more and more.

Anthony, I don’t know where you are in your payoff quest, but do a lot of reseach to see if you can find 0% offers for a year and in the interim, commit to paying off your balances by addressing spending habits, if that’s the issue. Also, if you have thrown a lot of your spending on one card to be efficient (ie, easier on one card to manage), look at getting those balances spread out over the cards. This allows your credit score to go up if you have a better average on utilization. No one quite understands that algorhythm but because of all the end cycle dates on cards spread out, it’s better to have, for example, a 20% utilization across all cards than have that ONE card at 85%, for example.

Yes, a headache to manage, but when you see the credit score improve, you might get better offers from various credit institutions.

Note: this advice is anecdotal, is believed to be gleaned from my own personal experience, and is in no way related to DOC or any other advice found on the web.

Anthony
Anthony (@guest_73440)
February 10, 2015 13:53

Have you ever swiped your own credit card on your Square reader, to make the qualifying purchases. I have had cards that had a introductory 0% purchase promotion but not a good balance transfer offer so I would swipe my card and use the cash to pay off higher interest balances. I just found out that is illegal lol.

JB
JB (@guest_72871)
February 9, 2015 16:17

Will, on the Santander rewards website it says that you can redeem the points also for a statement credit. Is there any confirmation if this applies to the 3% grocery/gas Bravo card? Is the ratio 1:1?