Mission Lane Cash Back Visa® Credit Card review: A chance to build credit and earn rewards

Like the Mission Lane Cash Back Visa card, the Capital One QuicksilverOne Cash Rewards Credit Card is an unsecured rewards credit card aimed at people with fair credit. 

The QuicksilverOne Cash Rewards card outshines the Mission Lane card because it earns 1.5 percent on every purchase and 5 percent cash back on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel. You may also be eligible for a credit line increase within six months, which just beats the Mission Lane’s seven months. 

However, these features come at a cost — specifically the QuicksilverOne Cash Rewards’ $39 annual fee (See Rates and Fees). If you aren’t spending enough each year to offset the annual fee with cash back, the QuicksilverOne can end up costing you.

Though the Mission Lane Cash Back card lacks perks and elevated rewards rates, it won’t burden you with added costs like an annual fee. Mission Lane’s card is the clear winner for people who prefer a cost-conscious card that helps improve their credit.

If earning rewards isn’t important to you and you’re OK with security deposits, the Capital One Platinum Secured Credit Card is worth a look. The Platinum Secured card is open to people with fair or limited credit. It doesn’t charge an annual fee or foreign transaction fee (See Rates and Fees) and has plenty of the perks you would expect with a credit-building card, including free access to your credit score, the ability to change your payment due date and tools to help you better manage your credit.

Unlike other secured cards, the Platinum Secured provides a $200 credit limit if you deposit $49, $99 or $200, which can help cardholders keep more of their cash, rather than tying it up in a security deposit or losing it to fees.

To make it even easier to put down funds, Capital One gives you 35 days to make your initial deposit and lets you make partial payments of at least $20. If the initial credit limit seems too low, you can deposit more funds to increase it up to $1,000. This flexibility gives you more power to determine your limit, compared to the Mission Lane card and it’s starting credit limit of $300 without any guarantee it will increase. Plus, you could get a higher credit limit after six months when Capital One reviews your account. And with good credit habits, you may be able to upgrade to an unsecured Capital One card.

The Mission Lane Cash Back card comes with great credit-building features. For starters, you get to see if you prequalify for the card and avoid a hard inquiry on your credit score. If approved, you can get a higher credit limit after seven months with responsible card use. This card also helps you track your credit-building progress with free credit-monitoring tools.

The Mission Lane Cash Back is a good choice for cardholders who pay off their balance every month. While credit utilization can be tight for this card, this card can be useful for people who don’t spend a lot each month.

A credit-building card’s cost has a large influence on its overall score. This is because cards in this category tend to be 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 the credit-building 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 expected earnings from the sum of its fees. 

To get a sense of a credit-building 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 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.

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 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 a credit-building card’s benefits based on how useful they are for someone looking to build a positive credit history or save money on everyday spending. 

We consider the inclusion of a rewards program 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.