MasterCard Terms and Conditions

On the record for MasterCard Terms and Conditions: a purchase APR of 9.24%–24.99% and a 12-month 0% opening period, filed by Financial Partners Credit Union. Against the 4,587 filings on this site, that rate lands around the 60th percentile.

What the document actually states

This page covers the agreement Financial Partners Credit Union filed for MasterCard Terms and Conditions. It is issued on the Mastercard network and the filing runs two pages.

The filing is explicit about a purchase rate, a cash advance rate, a balance transfer rate, a late payment maximum and a foreign transaction fee. It is silent on 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

This agreement opens at 0% for 12 months, the only period in the document where carrying a balance is free.

Zero-percent openings appear in roughly 458 of the filings on this site, which puts this agreement in a sizeable minority rather than a class of its own.

Behind the promotion sits a 24.99% purchase rate. On $2,000 that is in the region of $568 a year once the window closes.

Put the other way round, the 12-month zero rate is worth roughly $568 on a $2,000 balance relative to paying the go-to rate from day one — a real figure, but one that only materialises for someone who was going to carry that balance anyway.

How the purchase rate compares

Rather than a single purchase rate, the document gives a band — 9.24% at the bottom, 24.99% at the top, 15.75 points wide. The agreement discloses the range without disclosing how an account is placed within it.

The floor of that band sits at about the 8th percentile of filed purchase rates; the ceiling sits at about the 60th. 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 rate discussed in this section is the go-to rate — the one that applies once the promotional period described below has ended, not the promotional rate itself.

Translating the rate into money

A $5,000 balance left untouched for twelve months accrues about $1,419 in interest at this purchase rate.

On a median-priced agreement from this index (21.99%) the same $5,000 would run about $1,229 a year, so this card costs in the region of $190 more annually for the identical balance.

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.

Fees, and what triggers them

For cash advances the filing discloses a cash advance fee of $10 or 4% of the advance, whichever is greater and a cash advance APR of 22.74%. The two halves of that fee cross at about $250: below it the flat $10 applies, above it the percentage does. 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.

Moving a balance onto this card carries an up-front charge of $10 or 3% of the amount transferred, whichever is greater, with the transferred balance priced at 9.24%. Shifting $5,000 across attracts something like $150 in fees on day one.

Spending abroad costs an extra 3% — about $90 on $3,000 of purchases, independent of interest.

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

The downside terms

On the fee side, a late payment can cost up to $7, which is around the 4th percentile here.

Paying in full

Purchases carry a 25-day grace period: pay the statement in full inside it and the purchase rate never applies. That matches the 25-day median across the corpus almost exactly.

What you cannot learn from the filing

Absent from the captured terms: an annual 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

The original filing, 2 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

24.99% is an unexceptional purchase rate in this collection, and the rest of the terms follow the same pattern. And because the filing covers several products in one table, even the figures that are right may belong to a different card.