Educator Rewards Agreement 01

The Educator Rewards Agreement 01 2023 filing from Brightstar Credit Union sets out a purchase APR of 13.24%–18%, no annual fee and a 12-month 0% opening period. That purchase rate ranks near the 34th percentile across this corpus of 4,587 filings.

On the face of the filing

What follows is drawn entirely from Brightstar Credit Union's CFPB filing for Educator Rewards Agreement 01 2023. The filing runs four pages, and It is issued on the Visa network.

The filing is explicit about a purchase rate, a cash advance rate, a balance transfer rate, an annual fee line and a late payment maximum. No figure appears for a penalty rate.

The promotional period

A 12-month promotional period at 0% is on the record here — during it, qualifying balances cost nothing to carry.

About 458 agreements in this corpus carry a zero-percent opening rate; this is one of them.

Once the introductory period ends the rate becomes 18%, which turns a lingering $2,500 balance into approximately $493 of annual interest.

Valued honestly, 12 months at zero on $2,500 avoids about $493 of interest compared with the go-to rate — the whole of what the promotion delivers.

The purchase APR against the corpus

This is a tiered agreement: the filing discloses a purchase APR anywhere from 13.24% to 18%, a spread of 4.76 percentage points. Which end of that band applies is set by the issuer at account opening and the filing does not say how.

Those two numbers occupy very different places in the corpus: roughly the 24th percentile at the bottom and the 34th at the top.

Because the rate is variable, the figure quoted is tied to an index and will drift with it. Nothing here is a fixed commitment.

To be precise about which number this is: the filing identifies it as the rate that takes over after the introductory period, not the introductory rate.

The cost of carrying a balance

Carry $2,000 on this card for a year without paying it down and the purchase rate alone generates roughly $394 in interest.

Measured against the 21.99% corpus median, the same $2,000 costs approximately $97 less per year here.

Treat this as an illustration of what the disclosed rate does, not as a projection of a real account, which would be shaped by payments and by the fees described elsewhere in the filing.

Where the fees are

No annual fee appears in the filing, in line with the roughly 75% of disclosing agreements in this index that charge nothing to hold the card.

Cash advances carry a cash advance fee of $1 and a cash advance APR of 13.24%. Cash advances also tend to fall outside any grace period, which means interest typically starts on day one rather than at the end of a billing cycle.

The filing discloses a 13.24% balance transfer rate without an accompanying fee figure.

Spending abroad costs an extra 1% — about $10 on $1,000 of purchases, independent of interest.

When a payment is late

Late payments are capped at $25 under this filing, about the 32nd percentile of late fee maximums in the corpus.

Paying in full

Purchases carry a 25-day grace period: pay the statement in full inside it and the purchase rate never applies. That matches the 25-day median across the corpus almost exactly.

No minimum interest charge is imposed, so a cycle that accrues a few cents of interest is billed a few cents.

Against the rest of Brightstar Credit Union's filings

This is one of 4 Brightstar Credit Union agreements collected here. The others all file the same 18% purchase rate. Whatever separates these products, it is not the cost of borrowing.

What you cannot learn from the filing

Absent from the captured terms: penalty pricing. The original document is the place to look for any of these.

What this analysis can address is bounded by the filing: rates, fees and the terms around them. Everything a card issuer might advertise — rewards, benefits, bonuses, who qualifies — falls outside the document and outside this review.

Where the authority sits

The original filing, 4 pages long, is linked on this page and should be read before any figure here is acted on. It is also a snapshot: issuers refile as terms change.

In short

At 18% the purchase rate is close to ordinary for this corpus; nothing in the rate table sets this filing far apart from its peers. The absence of an annual fee means the rate is the only thing that can make this card expensive.