Update 6/15/23: Petal 2 card is being replaced with the Petal 1 Rise card (Chase won’t be happy) and this card charges a monthly fee of $8.
Correction: Petal is designed for people with no/low credit history rather than bad credit history.
The Petal Credit Card is a card for people with no credit history/score and unlike competitors comes with no annual or sign up fees. We first reviewed the card back in 2017. The major criticism we had is that the card came with no rewards program, starting Tuesday May 14th this will change.
Petal will offer all cardholders 1% cash back on all purchases and if you pay your card back on time you’ll earn higher cash back. The more ontime payments you make the more than cashback increases. The breakdown of increased cash back is as follows:
- Make 6 on time payments and your cash back will increase to 1.25%
- Make 12 on time payments and your cash back will increase to 1.5%
This new rewards program will also apply to existing cardholders and any purchases made from May 1st onwards will earn rewards (e.g even purchases that were made earlier this month before the rewards program was introduced).
If you have existing credit or good credit then obviously this card isn’t attractive as other cards earn at higher rates. If you are just getting started then this is an attractive option. My go to recommendation is still the Discover it Secured, as that card will earn 1% cash back on all purchases (doubled to 2% in the first year) and has 2% categories as well (doubled to 4% first year). That being said it’s a secured card and requires a security deposit so something like that isn’t always an option for people tight on funds.
I also really like the fact that Petal tries to encourage cardholders to make on time payments to increase the amount of rewards earned and the fact that the rewards program is being retroactively added to purchases already made in May for existing cardholders.
William Charles
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