Southwest Airlines Visa Agreement

The COL00079 Southwest Airlines Visa Agreement filing from Chase Bank USA sets out a $149 annual fee and a 29.99% penalty rate.

What the document actually states

COL00079 Southwest Airlines Visa Agreement is one of the agreements Chase Bank USA has on file with the CFPB. It is issued on the Visa network and the filing runs 21 pages.

The filing is explicit about a cash advance rate, a balance transfer rate, a penalty rate, an annual fee line and a late payment maximum. It is silent on a purchase rate and a grace period.

Parsing confidence here is medium, so treat the figures as indicative of the filing rather than a substitute for it.

Fees, and what triggers them

Holding the card costs $149 a year before any transaction takes place — about the 96th percentile among agreements in this index that state a fee.

Year one is free of the fee per the filing; $149 applies thereafter.

Cash advances carry a cash advance fee of $10 or 5% of the advance, whichever is greater and a cash advance APR of 24.99%. Advances under roughly $200 are charged the flat $10; larger ones are charged 5%. Cash advances also tend to fall outside any grace period, which means interest typically starts on day one rather than at the end of a billing cycle.

Balance transfers cost $5 or 5% of the amount transferred, whichever is greater up front and then accrue at 13.24%. Shifting $7,500 across attracts something like $375 in fees on day one.

The filing sets a 3% foreign transaction fee, which adds roughly $30 to $1,000 spent outside the United States.

That is at the high end of this corpus — around the 91st percentile of disclosed foreign transaction fees.

Paying in full

No minimum interest charge is imposed, so a cycle that accrues a few cents of interest is billed a few cents.

The downside terms

A penalty APR of 29.99% 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 61st percentile.

The maximum late fee is $40 — roughly the 72nd percentile of the late fee ceilings disclosed across this index.

The issuer's other agreements

There are 25 filings from Chase Bank USA in this index.

What the filing does not tell you

This page cannot tell you a purchase rate and a grace period, because the filing's disclosure table as read does not contain them.

What this analysis can address is bounded by the filing: rates, fees and the terms around them. Everything a card issuer might advertise — rewards, benefits, bonuses, who qualifies — falls outside the document and outside this review.

Go to the source

The original filing, 21 pages long, is linked on this page and should be read before any figure here is acted on. It is also a snapshot: issuers refile as terms change.

In short

The $149 annual fee is charged regardless of use, so it is a cost that applies even to an account that never revolves. Given the parsing confidence on this filing, read the agreement itself before treating any of these figures as settled.