The best credit-card deals

Getting a good deal on a credit card is becoming ever more difficult as banks continue to tighten their lending criteria. So what are the best credit card deals around at the moment? Ruth Jackson investigates.

The credit-card market received a shake up this week when NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) announced that in future they will only be accepting credit-card applications from existing customers. So is it worth becoming one, or are there better deals elsewhere?

RBS, the taxpayer-owned bank that owns NatWest, is making the change as it "fights against bad debts", says Kathryn Cooper in The Times. When banks look at the credit history of an existing customer they have a far broader range of data available to assess an applicant's risk than they do for new customers. So it's not hard to see why RBS has changed its credit-card policy.

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Ruth Jackson-Kirby

Ruth Jackson-Kirby is a freelance personal finance journalist with 17 years’ experience, writing about everything from savings accounts and credit cards to pensions, property and pet insurance.

Ruth started her career at MoneyWeek after graduating with an MA from the University of St Andrews, and she continues to contribute regular articles to our personal finance section. After leaving MoneyWeek she went on to become deputy editor of Moneywise before becoming a freelance journalist.

Ruth writes regularly for national publications including The Sunday Times, The Times, The Mail on Sunday and Good Housekeeping, among many other titles both online and offline.