I am considering this product. I had done some review on it. Actually I had read it many times before, just thinking maybe I can share some knowledge here with you.
I personally prefer the 24months package simply because the monthly rate is the cheapest. But do you know how much is the effective annual rate? After compounding monthly, the effective annual rate is 4.59%
There are plentiful of safe investment instruments out there that can easily make more than 5%pa on your investment. Therefore why not leverage on 4.59% and get back the return of 5%pa.
Below are some of the term and conditions worth to take note:-
1) The cheque payment to the other banks will be effected within 10 business days from the date of approval of your balance transfer.
- If you don't wish to be charged interest on the source credit card (the card to be transfer out), therefore you have to do your timing properly so that Maybank will pay your existing card before the statement date. Don't be surpise to be charged late payment charges if Maybank only pay your source bank (eg bank X) after the due date!
2) The finance charges will be calculated from the date your account is debited for settlement of your credit card account with other issuers.
- This means that interest will be calculated immediately not until end of the statement date. This might make a 20 days different in interest saving days.
3) For 24 and 36 months plans: Upon approval of your Balance Transfer, NO new account will be allocated. The balance transferred will be in your existing Visa/MasterCard/American Express account.
- Incase you are not aware, some bank actually transfer your money to a new account number when you do a balance transfer. This is for the ease of maintenance. Because your account might be might with other purchases of the month which suppose to be charged higher interest compare to the money from balance transfer. Generally the bank will knock off the principle with the highest interest rate before paying for the lower.
4) RM30.00 processing fee will be charged for each Balance Transfer application approved.
- Most banks charges a minimum processing fees which ranges from RM20 to RM50. This fees is a serious consideration. Example if you transfer only RM1000 but charged RM50 for the processing fee, that comes to 5% of charges just in 1 transaction. That is extremely expensive. Therefore I will only transfer bigger amount to the bank with higher processing fees. If you have the balance transfer size of more than RM5000, the effective cost (interest rate and processing fee) is only about 5% pa stil. For me, 5% is consider relatively cheap :)
P/S: Remember use our card for convenience not for credit (unless in special case :)
