visa disclosure

American Airlines Federal Credit Union's filed agreement for visa disclosure discloses a purchase APR of 10.5%–18%, no annual fee, a 1.9% introductory rate and a 18% penalty rate. Against the 4,587 filings on this site, that rate lands around the 34th percentile.

What the agreement puts on the record

American Airlines Federal Credit Union submitted the terms for visa disclosure to the CFPB's agreement database; this is what they contain. The filing runs four pages, and It is issued on the Visa network.

On the record here: a purchase rate, a cash advance rate, a balance transfer rate, a penalty rate and an annual fee line.

The filing bundles multiple products into one disclosure table. Any figure quoted here may describe a related card in the same filing, so the PDF should be read before treating these numbers as this card's own.

What the promotional rate is worth

A promotional rate of 1.9% applies for nine months under this agreement — lower than the standard rate, but not free.

Among the 763 filings here that disclose an introductory rate, 1.9% sits at about the 62nd percentile.

Behind the promotion sits a 18% purchase rate. On $3,000 that is in the region of $591 a year once the window closes.

Where the purchase APR sits

The purchase APR is quoted as a range of 10.5% to 18%. That 7.5-point spread is the whole of what the filing commits to; the method for assigning a rate inside it is not in the document.

The floor of that band sits at about the 12th percentile of filed purchase rates; the ceiling sits at about the 34th. In corpus terms the same card can be cheap or expensive depending on how it is priced.

This is disclosed as a variable rate. The number above is a snapshot: it tracks an index, so it changes without the agreement being amended.

The arithmetic of revolving

A $5,000 balance left untouched for twelve months accrues about $986 in interest at this purchase rate.

A typical filing in this index would charge about $1,229 on that balance; this one is roughly $244 a year below it.

Per statement cycle that is on the order of $74.50 on $5,000, which is the number that actually shows up on a bill.

Treat this as an illustration of what the disclosed rate does, not as a projection of a real account, which would be shaped by payments and by the fees described elsewhere in the filing.

When a payment is late

A penalty APR of 18% sits in this filing, applied when the account falls into default as the agreement defines it. Against the 794 filings here that disclose one, that is roughly the 19th percentile.

$25 is the disclosed ceiling on a late payment fee, placing it near the 32nd percentile of the set.

What the card costs before you borrow

The annual fee is $0. Roughly 75% of filings here that state a fee state zero, so the absence of one is unremarkable in this market.

For cash advances the filing discloses a cash advance fee of $2 and a cash advance APR of 10.5%. The grace period described below generally does not extend to cash advances, so interest on them usually begins immediately.

Transferred balances are priced at 10.5%; no separate transfer fee was captured from the filing.

Spending abroad costs an extra 1% — about $50 on $5,000 of purchases, independent of interest.

Paying in full

23 days is the disclosed grace period for purchases — the interval in which paying in full costs nothing. The typical filing here allows 25 days, so this one is tighter than most.

A minimum interest charge of $0.50 applies in any cycle where interest is due, which makes very small revolving balances disproportionately expensive.

How it sits in the issuer's own range

This is one of 5 American Airlines Federal Credit Union agreements collected here.

The limits of this document

It is worth being explicit about scope: these filings record terms and pricing. They say nothing about rewards programmes, cardholder benefits, promotional offers or who the issuer will approve, and this review does not speculate about any of it.

Where the authority sits

Everything here is a reading of the filed agreement, four pages of it, which is linked above and which governs. Terms also change between filings, so the date on the document matters.

In short

At 18% the purchase rate is close to ordinary for this corpus; nothing in the rate table sets this filing far apart from its peers. The multi-product table is the larger caveat: these numbers are the table's, not necessarily this card's.