2.1 Credit card providers

Credit cards are offered by a range of financial institutions with the majority of cards being run by the major high street banking groups.

Some of the more well-known credit card providers are Barclaycard, MBNA, Capital One and Egg.

Recently, supermarkets have also started to run their own credit cards as part of their own personal finance services. For example, Sainsbury’s run their credit card through Sainsbury’s Bank and Tesco run their credit cards through their Tesco Personal Finance branch.

The most common scenario is for one group, called the parent company, to run several credit cards under different brand names to cater for several areas of the market.

If one parent company runs several credit cards it is likely that they will only allow one promotional 0% balance transfer or purchase offer per person. This would mean you would have to find a card belonging to a different parent company if you wanted to switch from one balance transfer card to another.

Credit card providers advertise in a number of ways to get your business including advertisements on the television, radio and in papers and through online methods such as comparison sites like compareandsave.com.

Back to Guide to Credit Cards Contents

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