Secured Cardmember Agreement

On the record for Secured Cardmember Agreement: a 27.49% purchase APR and a $24 annual fee, filed by Fifth Third Bank. That purchase rate ranks near the 66th percentile across this corpus of 4,587 filings.

What the document actually states

The document behind this page is Fifth Third Bank's filed agreement for Secured Cardmember Agreement. It is issued on the Mastercard network and the filing runs ten pages.

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 and a foreign transaction fee.

What "secured" changes

Secured cards work against a deposit held by the issuer. The rate and fee figures summarised here say nothing about the size of that deposit or the terms attached to it, both of which are matters for the agreement text itself.

It is worth noting that collateral does not automatically mean a cheap rate: at 27.49%, this filing's purchase APR still sits at about the 66th percentile of the whole corpus, secured and unsecured filings alike.

Pricing the purchase rate

27.49% puts the purchase APR near the 66th percentile across 2,280 agreements, so it is dearer than the typical filing.

This is disclosed as a variable rate. The number above is a snapshot: it tracks an index, so it changes without the agreement being amended.

The cost of carrying a balance

Put $2,000 on the card and never reduce it, and twelve months of interest at the disclosed purchase rate comes to approximately $633.

The median purchase rate across the corpus is 21.99%; the same balance there would cost about $492. The gap — roughly $141 a year on $2,000 — is the price of this particular filing over a typical one.

Note the $1.50 minimum interest charge, which overrides the arithmetic above whenever the calculated interest falls below it.

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.

Charges beyond interest

$24 a year is the disclosed annual fee, which ranks near the 77th percentile of the fees filed across this corpus.

Expressed in the card's own terms, the $24 fee equals about a year's interest on a $87 balance at the disclosed 27.49% purchase rate.

For cash advances the filing discloses a cash advance fee of $10 or 5% of the advance, whichever is greater and a cash advance APR of 28.49%. Cash is therefore 1 points dearer than buying something with the card. Advances under roughly $200 are charged the flat $10; larger ones are charged 5%.

Moving a balance onto this card carries an up-front charge of $5 or 4% of the amount transferred, whichever is greater, with the transferred balance priced at 20.74%. On $3,000 that fee is about $120 before any interest is charged.

The downside terms

Late payments are capped at $41 under this filing, about the 89th percentile of late fee maximums in the corpus.

Grace period and minimum charge

23 days is the disclosed grace period for purchases — the interval in which paying in full costs nothing. The typical filing here allows 25 days, so this one is tighter than most.

The $1.50 minimum interest charge means the effective cost of carrying a very small balance is far higher than the quoted APR implies.

What the filing does not tell you

This page cannot tell you a foreign transaction fee and penalty pricing, because the filing's disclosure table as read does not contain them.

An agreement filing is not a marketing document. Rewards, perks, welcome offers and eligibility rules are not in it, are not in this dataset, and are therefore not discussed anywhere on this page.

How it sits in the issuer's own range

Fifth Third Bank has 5 agreements indexed on this site. The issuer's own range is 8.74%–29.49%. At 27.49%, this agreement is dearer than 2 of its siblings.

Its $24 annual fee is higher than 4 of the 4 sibling filings that state one.

Where the authority sits

This summary stands or falls on the linked PDF — ten pages. Agreements are amended over time, and the filing reflects the terms as submitted rather than as they stand today.

In short

The pricing here is middling by the standards of the index — 27.49% on purchases is near enough to typical. Against that sits the $24 annual fee, which is unavoidable once the account is open.