Secured Cardmember Agreement

Secured Cardmember Agreement 033126, as filed by Discover Bank, carries a 26.49% purchase APR and no annual fee. That purchase rate ranks near the 63rd percentile across this corpus of 4,587 filings.

The disclosed terms

What follows is drawn entirely from Discover Bank's CFPB filing for Secured Cardmember Agreement 033126. It is issued on the Discover network and the filing runs six pages.

On the record here: a purchase rate, a cash advance rate, a balance transfer rate, an annual fee line and a late payment maximum. No figure appears for a penalty rate and a foreign transaction fee.

A secured agreement

This is a secured agreement — the credit line is collateralised by a deposit. The disclosure table captured on this page covers pricing only; the mechanics of the deposit live in the body of the document.

It is worth noting that collateral does not automatically mean a cheap rate: at 26.49%, this filing's purchase APR still sits at about the 63rd percentile of the whole corpus, secured and unsecured filings alike.

The purchase rate in context

Ranked against the corpus, this purchase APR — 26.49% — sits at approximately the 63rd percentile and comes in above the median.

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

Put $4,000 on the card and never reduce it, and twelve months of interest at the disclosed purchase rate comes to approximately $1,213.

On a median-priced agreement from this index (21.99%) the same $4,000 would run about $983 a year, so this card costs in the region of $229 more annually for the identical balance.

Broken down to a single thirty-day cycle, the same balance accrues roughly $88.01.

Small balances do not get a proportionally small bill — the agreement imposes a $0.50 minimum interest charge in any month where interest applies.

These figures are arithmetic on the disclosed rate, not a quote: they assume the balance is never reduced, ignore any payments, and take no account of fees charged separately.

Where the fees are

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.

Cash advances carry a cash advance fee of $10 or 5% of the advance, whichever is greater and a cash advance APR of 28.49%. Cash is therefore 2 points dearer than buying something with the card. The grace period described below generally does not extend to cash advances, so interest on them usually begins immediately.

Moving a balance onto this card carries an up-front charge of 5% of the amount transferred, with the transferred balance priced at 26.49%. Shifting $1,000 across attracts something like $50 in fees on day one.

The downside terms

$41 is the disclosed ceiling on a late payment fee, placing it near the 89th percentile of the set.

The no-interest path

The filing gives 25 days' grace on purchases, meaning a statement balance paid in full within that window attracts no interest. That matches the 25-day median across the corpus almost exactly.

Where interest applies at all, the filing bills at least $0.50. On a tiny balance that floor can dwarf the rate itself.

The issuer's other agreements

3 separate Discover Bank filings appear in the corpus. Every one of the others that discloses a purchase rate discloses the same 26.49%, so the issuer's filings are near-identical on pricing and the differences between its cards lie outside the rate table.

What is outside the disclosure

Absent from the captured terms: a foreign transaction fee and penalty pricing. The original document is the place to look for any of these.

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.

Reading the agreement yourself

Everything here is a reading of the filed agreement, six 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 26.49% the purchase rate is close to ordinary for this corpus; nothing in the rate table sets this filing far apart from its peers.