TD Clear with $1,000 Credit Limit card review: Unique product with limited usefulness

The TD Clear with $1,000 Credit Limit card gives you precisely what the name says —  a $1,000 credit limit. This card has no interest charges, penalties or additional transaction fees, instead, it charges a fixed monthly fee of $10. The actual annual cost of this card is $120, no matter how much you spend with it.

You don’t earn any rewards, and have a set monthly payment of $45, which includes the monthly fee.

The TD Clear with $1,000 Credit Limit card can make sense if you use the entire credit limit and pay it off over time to avoid interest.

No interest: Carrying a balance isn’t as costly

The best value for this card is if you use almost or all of the $1,000 available credit limit and carry a balance. Because the card doesn’t charge interest, you can use it for emergency expenses or financing larger purchases without worrying about the cost of borrowing. If you carry a balance on the card, you’ll pay a minimum $45 monthly payment, which includes the $10 monthly membership fee.

If you’re carrying balances on this or other cards, it might be beneficial for budgeting purposes to know that you pay $45 every month, no matter what. You can have peace of mind knowing that no additional interest accrues outside of the fixed monthly fee.

For example, if you have a $1,000 balance on the card, you’ll pay a flat $45 minimum monthly payment, which includes the $10 monthly fee. If you carried that same balance on a credit card with a 20 percent APR for 12 months (approximately the current average credit card interest rate), your monthly interest charges would be $16.70, and your monthly payment would be around $93. In this case, the TD Clear Platinum Visa with $1,000 Credit Limit is a cheaper option.

The TD Clear Platinum Visa with $1,000 Credit Limit card makes sense for particular circumstances. Here’s why you might not want it.

Rewards: No rewards to round out value

This card doesn’t earn any rewards on purchases. While the card’s main purpose is to avoid interest and have predictable monthly payments, credit card rewards are always a welcome sight.

Earning rewards for your credit card spending is one of the best reasons to have a credit card. And many cards for people with good credit offer at least 1 percent cash back or 1X points on spending. The lack of rewards on this card — despite its lack of interest charges — can reduce its long-term value.

Fees: Not worth it if you never carry a balance

While the card doesn’t charge interest, it has a $10 monthly fee, which adds up to $120 per year. Many high-end premium cards charge less than that and provide a ton of top-level benefits in exchange for an annual fee.

If an annual fee is worth it to you, you should explore rewards credit cards that charge a sub-$100 annual fee. Many of them offer extra benefits and statement credits with which you can extract more value than the annual fee. And if you never carry a balance, you won’t pay interest charges anyway.

If you have good or better credit and need to carry a balance, you may be better off with one of the best 0 percent intro APR cards. If you know you have large upcoming expenses that you can’t pay in full upfront, having a 0 percent intro APR offer gives you the time and flexibility to pay it off without accruing interest. This is also helpful for saving your budget for when unexpected expenses arise.

Perks: Limited cardholder perks can’t justify fees

Having any of the Visa Platinum benefits is a handy feature to have when emergencies arise. The main perk that the TD Clear Platinum Visa with $1,000 Credit Limit offers is cell phone protection. If you pay your cell phone bill with the card, you have coverage for up to two claims per 12-month period at up to $500 for each claim, totaling $1,000.

While this is a helpful perk, the $10 monthly fee for the card makes it hard to justify. Plenty of no-annual-fee cards have similar cell phone protection plans.

Geographic restrictions: Only available around the East Coast

Even if you decide this card is a good fit for you, you won’t be able to get it unless you live on the East Coast. The TD Clear Platinum Visa with $1,000 Credit Limit card is only available in the following states: Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington, D.C.

While the TD Clear Platinum Visa with $1,000 Credit Limit can help you avoid interest if you have good credit, other cards may be better, depending on your situation.

The TD Clear Platinum Visa with $1,000 Credit Limit card has very unique and limited circumstances where it would benefit the cardholder. If they apply to you, it could be worth considering.

The TD Clear with $1,000 Credit Limit card isn’t the best choice in most situations but can be helpful under the right circumstances. Since we recommend you have good credit to get approved for this card, you’d likely be able to find other cards that would far outweigh the value of this card. If you need a cheaper option for carrying a $1,000 balance, this may provide some value. Otherwise, this card probably isn’t worth it.

Our proprietary card rating system takes into account a mix of factors when scoring balance transfer and low-interest cards, including each card’s introductory APR, intro APR period length, ongoing APR, balance transfer fee, perks and more.

While balance transfer and low-interest cards share a similar ratings rubric, we weigh features differently based on how a card is categorized. We categorize cards that carry an especially long intro APR offer on balance transfers as dedicated balance transfer cards, while cards that offer an especially low ongoing APR are considered general low-interest cards. 

Based on its features, we assigned this card a primary category of low interest and tailored our ratings accordingly. 

We analyzed over 100 of the most popular balance transfer and low-interest cards and scored each based on how its key features stacked up against those of other cards in its category. 

Here’s a breakdown of what gave this card its score: