Avant Credit Card review: A decent choice with little added benefits

If you want a credit-building card, that doesn’t mean you can’t earn rewards, even with secured cards. Several secured options are more rewarding than unsecured cards available for people with a limited credit history.

A top contender is the Discover it® Secured Credit Card, offering cash back at gas stations and restaurants and a unique welcome offer — Discover will match all cash back you’ve earned at the end of your first year. This card is a great choice for beginning credit builders, as it doesn’t charge an annual fee, forgives cardholders for the first late payment (up to $41 after that) and has no foreign transaction fees. Additionally, the card comes with a low intro APR on balance transfers if you need to consolidate debt.

Discover will also begin reviewing your account starting at seven months to see if you qualify for an unsecured credit line. The Avant Credit Card also touts proactive credit limit increases as a credit-building feature, but its timeline for upgrade is less clear. However, the Avant card doesn’t require an initial deposit, while the Discover it® Secured Credit Card requires at least a $200 minimum deposit when you open it.

The Discover it® Secured Credit Card could prove to be a less expensive and more rewarding short-term credit-building card that doesn’t require a credit history. But if you don’t want to pay a security deposit upfront or you don’t want to wait for an unsecured credit line, then the Avant card might still win out.

The Upgrade Cash Rewards Visa® has a terrific rewards program that encourages responsible card use. You’ll earn 1.5 percent unlimited cash back on card purchases every time you make a payment. Since your payment history is the most influential factor on your credit score, having a card that rewards you when you make payments is a great way to help cement this positive and important credit habit. 

Other features of the Upgrade Cash Rewards Visa that outshine the Avant Credit Card include no annual fee, a potentially low ongoing interest rate and the chance to earn a welcome offer (though the requirements may be more complicated than what you’d find on typical cards). 

Both cards are unsecured options, so either would be ideal for someone who wants to skip a security deposit. If limited redemption options with the Upgrade Cash Rewards Visa are not a dealbreaker, then it might be worth a look over the Avant card. But if earning rewards is not your priority and you want something a bit more straightforward, the Avant Credit Card may be your pick. 

People with fair credit scores may have better approval odds for the Avant Credit Card than some of the other popular rewards cards available, and they can use the Avant card to work their way up with responsible card use. 

If you don’t want to tie up money in a security deposit, the Avant card doesn’t require this extra cost. However, you may still end up paying an annual fee depending on your creditworthiness. 

One of the top features of the Avant card is that it doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees, making it an ideal companion for people with fair credit traveling abroad. 

A student or credit-building card’s cost has a large influence on its overall score. 

Students already face a ton of expenses, so extra card costs are best avoided if possible, and people with limited or damaged credit tend often find the cards they can qualify for are much pricier than traditional credit cards designed for people with a good or better credit score. 

We compare a card’s total cost, including any annual fees, account activation fees, monthly fees and more against the total cost of other cards in this category and assign each card a score based on its affordability. We also factor rewards-earning potential into our assessment of a credit-building card’s total cost, subtracting a card’s expected earnings from the sum of its fees. 

To get a sense of a card’s rewards-earning potential, we estimate its average annual rewards rate and average annual earnings based on the most popular spending categories (as covered in the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer spending report). 

However, we use a slightly lower spending assumption ($300 per month or $3,600 per year) to estimate average earnings, assuming students and credit-builders will start out with a lower credit limit, will want to keep credit utilization low and will focus primarily on small purchases they can easily pay off.

Given the many costs students face — from textbooks to laptops — the presence of an introductory APR on purchases or balance transfers also plays a role in a student card’s score.

A card’s APR is also a major factor in its credit-building score. Each card’s average APR is compared against the average APR of other cards in the category, and the cards with lower-than-average APRs receive a higher rating. 

Though high APRs are hard to avoid when you’re just starting out or working on your score, credit-builders should strive for as low an APR as possible since they’re likely to either be new to managing cards or trying to establish better financial habits and avoid falling into debt.

Along with a credit-building card’s cost, our rating system takes into account how easy the card makes it to build credit. To assess this, we evaluate its credit limit potential and minimum deposit requirement.

Unsecured cards with a high starting credit limit and secured cards that let you put down a large deposit and get a matching high credit limit will score the highest according to our “Ease of building credit” rubric and are more likely to appear on our list. 

This is because a high credit limit can make it much easier to keep your credit utilization low, a primary credit-building factor that makes up 30 percent of your FICO credit score. 

Secured cards have a slight advantage in this category since the maximum credit limit on a secured card tends to be much higher than the typical starting credit limit on an unsecured card that’s available with a bad or fair credit score. However, unsecured credit-building cards have the upper hand in another key aspect of building credit: accessibility. 

Cards that carry no or a low deposit requirement can also receive a high score according to our “Ease of building credit” rubric since these cards offer a lower barrier to entry than secured cards that require you to put up hundreds of dollars in an upfront deposit. 

Indeed, some users may prefer to pay a non-refundable $50 annual fee while they work on their credit score than tie up hundreds in a refundable security deposit.

We also evaluate each card’s benefits based on how useful they are for students or someone looking to build a positive credit history and save money on everyday spending. 

We consider the inclusion of a rewards program, student-centric perks and access to your credit score or a credit monitoring service of prime importance, along with the ability to prequalify for the card with only a soft credit pull and a clear path to increase your credit limit or graduate to an unsecured or full-fledged rewards card.

Cards that include these benefits are likely to score higher according to our credit-building card scoring rubric.

The Avant Credit Card is geared towards individuals with fair or average credit, meaning applicants will need at least a FICO score between 580 and 669 or at least a VantageScore of 601 to 660. If you aren’t sure if you’ll get approved, this card also gives you a chance to pre-qualify with only a soft pull of your credit report, which has no impact on your credit score.

This card offers a credit limit ranging from $300 to $3,000, depending on your creditworthiness. 

This is a Mastercard, so it offers near-universal acceptance in the U.S. and over 210 countries, making your Avant card usable nearly anywhere credit cards are accepted.