Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Are 0% Transfers Dead?


The Wall Street Journal had an article the other day on 0% credit card transfers, i.e. transferring money from credit cards offering 0% interest rates and profiting off of the interest (also called credit card arbitrage).
This practice was well known in the personal finance community, and several pf bloggers had great posts about how to exploit it.

The problem is that credit card arbitrage is becoming a victim of its own success; the Wall Street Journal articles and other publicity it is garnering is causing banks to take some protections, which if they become widespread might well kill the practice.

I'm pretty disappointed. I was hesitant to get involved with credit card arbitrage because of the risks to my credit score, but lately I've started to think that the damage wouldn't be permanent and it might be worth the thousand dollars of interest a year. It appears that I have waited too long.

Get Rich Slick's blog has announced that he will be abandoning credit card arbitrage and instead will be pursuing other arbitrage opportunities. I am not sure what that means, but if I figure it out, I'll be sure to share it!



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