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Current Gas Station Credit Card Offers
Here is a rundown of what the most commonly searched for gas station credit cards offer:
1.) The ExxonMobil MasterCard offers 15 cents per gallon on Exxon gas purchases. At $4.00 a gallon, this works out to less than a four percent savings. The interest rate on this card is either 19.99% or 23.99%.
2.) The Shell credit card offers only a 5 cent per gallon rebate. At $4.00 a gallon, this works out to slightly more than 1% cash back. Additionally, this card can only be used at Shell gas stations and carries a 24.99% interest rate.
3.) The Chevron & Texaco credit card offers 10 cents per gallon, or 2.5% cash back. Depending on the card you choose, the interest rate can be as high as 26.99%.
4.) The BP credit card offers 5% cash back on BP gas purchases, but charges an interest rate ranging from 15.24% to 21.24%.
Given the low cash back rates and limitations that come with these cards, only consumers who spend heavily on gas at a single station can really benefit from these offers. Most others will be much better off with a standard cash back rewards card.
Gas Rebate Credit Card Tips
Be Careful with Gas Station Credit Cards: Gas station credit cards offer tempting rewards, but most gas credit cards tied to a specific station charge extremely high interest rates. The Exxon Mobile card, for example, offers fifteen cents per gallon. Assuming gas is $3.80 a gallon, that's close to 4% in rewards. However, this card carries an interest rate over 20%. The same is true for many other gas station cards, including some with much less generous rewards. Thus, unless you pay your bill in full every month, you can end up spending much more in interest than you can earn in cash back.
What Credit Cards Offer 5% Cash Back on Gas?: A few years ago, a number of gas credit cards offered 5% cash back on every gas purchase. Today, most cards offer 1% year round and 5% a few months every year. However, opting for a card with a large sign up bonus more than offsets this, as getting $100 to $200 cash back is essentially like getting 5% to 10% cash back on the first $2,000 spent on gas, plus cash back on everything else, which also tends to include 5% cash back on gas three months a year and 5% on other major expenses in the remaining months.
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