Small Balance Credit Card Waiver (Issuers Waive Small Balances)

Did you know that some banks will waive your credit card bill if it just has a very small balance on it?

Small Balance Waiver

With many credit cards, if the balance on your statement is small – usually 99 cents or less – the bank will forgive it; it’s too small to ask you to pay. Usually it shows up on the bill as a “credit adjustment” or something similar.

Here’s the data that we’ve found so far on how much will be forgiven:

• Alliant Credit Union: will not forgive $1
• Amex – none (YMMV – we hear sporadic reports of people getting waivers: 1, 2)
• Apple Card (and Goldman Sachs cards) – waives $.99 and possibly even $1
• Bank of America – none (occasionally, they do waive as much as $4.75)
• Bank of the West – none (did not waive $.98 bill)
• Barclay will forgive $1 or less
• Barclay business cards now forgive charges of $1 or less
• BBVA Compass will forgive $1 (source)
• Best Buy Citi will forgive $.99 (1), but not $1; another reader reports (12/23/18) them not forgiving $.99
• Capital One will forgive $1
• Cardless will not forgive $.99 (1)
• Chase – none (As of November 2014, Chase is no longer forgiving small balances; however, some are still reporting success.)
• Citi – none (1) (one report of a waiver for $.27, another of $.50)
• Citizens Bank forgives $.99 (ymmv)
• Comenity Bank no longer forgives $1.99, unclear if they forgive at all (1, 2, 3); data point on $2+ waiver (1, 2, 3)
• Crate & Barrel will forgive $1.50
• Credit First will forgive $.99 (source)
• Discover – Most people get waived up to $2. (In 2018, some people stopped getting that waiver.)
• Elan (Fidelity) will forgive $1 (1, 2); they stopped waiving (1, 2, 3); they still waive $1 (1, 2, 3)
• FIA – none
• Fifth Third Bank – none
• First Tech – none (1)
• FNBO Omaha – none (1)
• Home Depot card will forgive $.99 (source) or even $1.83 (source)
• HSBC – none
• Kohl’s card will forgive $.99
• M&T will forgive $.99, won’t forgive $1
• Marcus (GM) will forgive $1 (1, 2)
• Macy’s Amex – none
• NFCU: none
• OceanFirst Amex– will forgive $1
• PenFed will forgive $1
• PNC – none (won’t forgive $.99)
• PSECU – will not waive (1)
• Sallie Mae – none (1)
• Sears Citi – will forgive $.99
• Shopyourway Citi – will forgive $.99
• Staples Citi will forgive up to $.50 (?) (source)
• Suntrust – none
• Synchrony – none (one report of a waiver here, another here)
• Target credit card none
• TD Bank – none (won’t forgive $.99) now forgives $.50
• Truist – none (1)
• US Bank – will forgive $1 [Note: they will not forgive the small balance in the month that you are charged $0 for the “annual fee”, but the other 11 months you should get the $1 forgiven.]
• USAA forgives $.99
• Wells Fargo seems they no longer forgive $2 or even $.99 (1, 2, 3, 4) Others still get $2 forgiven (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Some of this info is based on my own experiences, and some is based on readers comments to this post, on this Reddit thread, and on this FatWallet thread.

How to Use It

This may not sound so easy to make use of, but consider the fact that Amazon allows accounts reloads of as little as 50 cents (here’s a link to that – contains our affiliate). So after you go through the pain of setting up all your credit cards in your Amazon account, you can just go one-by-one and buy 99 cent e-gift cards on each credit card once a month.

Some people do this actively to net the $.99 or whatever across a bunch of cards. Other people aren’t comfortable with this, but can still use it sporadically when trying to keep a card active or the like. Regardless, it’s good to know why you might see a waiver pop up on your credit card bill for a small amount.

Effect on Credit Score

We know that 30% of the FICO score is based off your credit utilization ratio. We’ve written that anecdotal evidence suggests that the sweet spot for optimizing your utilization ratio is to have zero utilization on all your credit cards, besides for one card which should have a utilization of something under 10% of the credit limit on that card.

How will this $.99 trick effect your credit score? If you leave a $.99 balance on numerous credit cards, will the $.99 balance show up on your credit report and hinder the above mentioned sweet spot?

No. Based on what I see on my own credit report, I believe that for two reasons this will not hinder your credit score at all.

Firstly, in general the balances always get rounded down to the dollar. So if you have a balance of $532.99, it shows up as a $532 balance. In our case, the $.99 balances are showing up as $0 on my credit report, just as all balances are rounded down to the dollar. I would therefore assume that your utilization ratio remains zero.

Additionally, since the credit card issuer is waiving that small balance, they report it as a balance of $0; the waiver is factored into the balance reported. I see this from the balance reported on my Discover card. As mentioned, Discover waives up to $2. On my credit report the balance is showing up as $0, despite the fact that there was actually a $2 balance. Apparently, since they are waiving the $2, they don’t report that balance at all.

Our Verdict

We’re obviously not getting rich on this, but it sounds like a cute way to get $5-$10 in Amazon gift cards per month with minimal effort. Please comment below with any additional (current) info, and we’ll update the post to reflect the additional information.

It’s worth noting that some banks might not take kindly to this, so keep in mind the small risk. Some people aren’t comfortable taking advantage of this; it’s still useful to know which banks have a waiver, for planning purposes.