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After reading through the page, I don't see what makes this different from normal secured credit cards which have been around forever. Is it just the Amazon bra

After reading through the page, I don't see what makes this different from normal secured credit cards which have been around forever. Is it just the Amazon branding and gift-card promo?

diehunde 7y ago
I got the cards and unlike other secured cards it didn't ask for a previous deposit and it gave me a much better balance.
lemcoe9 7y ago
You get the 5% cashback on Amazon.com purchases. That would appear to be the real value-add here, because you would also get that cashback reward using the non-secured and well-established Amazon.com credit card.
- Pieman103021 7y ago
  You get 5% cashback if you have Amazon prime. Assuming you are a student trying to build your credit, that's $60 a year. That means for the 5% cash back to break even you need to spend $1200 on Amazon per year. That's not obscene, but it doesn't really seem worth it to me unless you use Amazon a lot.
  - 09bjb 7y ago
    Yep, this is the kicker. They're not highlighting any other form of rewards (such as 2% cash back on everything, or airline miles) so it's not really moving the needle on anything other than the fact that it's Amazon-branded. I see it as just another ploy to get you to spend more money in the Amazon ecosystem.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    That's assuming you don't use prime for anything else, like free fast shipping, or the TV shows.
    - bongobongo 7y ago
      I let my Prime subscription expire 6 months ago and I honestly haven't even noticed. The quality of the Amazon experience had already declined so much that I had already stopped using Amazon for most of my shopping/streaming. 2-3 years ago, I was making a purchase on Amazon at least once a month. These days I only use Amazon for price-matching at other stores.
      - asdff 7y ago
        They let their store rot, I dropped prime too a while ago.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tedmiston 7y ago
    Because of Amazon Household [1], you do not necessarily have to hold your own Prime membership to get the 5% back. Being on a Household Prime account is enough to get the full cash back on the regular Amazon credit card, so I'd expect the same would work here. Admittedly their card marketing websites do not make this super clear. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/myh/households https://www.amazon.com/myh/households
bongobongo 7y ago
It's worse than your typical secured credit card because it locks you into Amazon.com and services that use Amazon Pay. Basically, it's an agreement to buy Amazon products or products through Amazon until Amazon determines that your purchasing and payment habits reflect those of a person with good credit. People saying that it's great because you get 5% back on Amazon purchases are myopic. Nobody on HN would be celebrating the Starbucks Card Credit Builder where you get a 5% discount on purchases and can build credit but can only do so by purchasing products from Starbucks and its affiliates. Why? Because as others have said, there are already plenty of secured Visa/Mastercard cards out there that don't convert your capital to funnybux and lock you in to a particular vendor and its best buddies.
- caconym_ 7y ago
  On the other hand, Starbucks really only sells one sort of thing (food) while Amazon sells many things. Furthermore, Starbucks is a luxury, but on Amazon you can, I think, buy many of life's necessities at competitive prices. I agree that the motive is not necessarily pure. Furthermore I think Amazon is a huge force opposite sustainable economics, and that the American credit system, credit bureaus, and the symbiotic partners who encourage people to take on debt and prey on them in that vulnerable, owned state, are a diabolical construct engineered for social control and a crime against the American people. But, I think the comparison with Starbucks is not quite right. This is short-sightedly better and long-sightedly worse, for a lot of the same reasons.
  - bongobongo 7y ago
    You're right that it wasn't a good analogy. More like the Wal-Mart Store Card Credit Builder.
    - freetime2 7y ago
      A Wal-Mart Store Card Credit builder that gave 5% cash back would be a great product for a lot of people, and just as worthy of “celebration” as this Amazon card. I don’t have any problems with store cards in general. I see them as a mutually beneficial agreement between retailers and frequent customers. It allows the retailer to capture a portion of the transaction revenue that would normally go to a third party (and some extra data about the customer), and in return pass on some of the savings to the customer in the form of discounts and rewards.
lxe 7y ago
It's secured manually by a deposit, which dictates your credit line. If you don't pay it back, the bank keeps the deposit. "Normal" cards are not backed by anything.
gwbas1c 7y ago
It's not a credit card. (It's not Visa, Mastercard, or Amex)
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  It's just a terminology thing, so not terribly important, but these types of cards are called "store cards" or "retail cards", and they are usually considered to be credit cards, despite having some differences from regular credit cards. This card seems to allow you carry a balance from one month to the next, so that means it isn't a "charge card" which must be paid in full every month: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_card

After reading through the page, I don't see what makes this different from normal secured credit cards which have been around forever. Is it just the Amazon branding and gift-card promo?

diehunde 7y ago

I got the cards and unlike other secured cards it didn't ask for a previous deposit and it gave me a much better balance.

lemcoe9 7y ago

You get the 5% cashback on Amazon.com purchases. That would appear to be the real value-add here, because you would also get that cashback reward using the non-secured and well-established Amazon.com credit card.

Pieman103021 7y ago
You get 5% cashback if you have Amazon prime. Assuming you are a student trying to build your credit, that's $60 a year. That means for the 5% cash back to break even you need to spend $1200 on Amazon per year. That's not obscene, but it doesn't really seem worth it to me unless you use Amazon a lot.
- 09bjb 7y ago
  Yep, this is the kicker. They're not highlighting any other form of rewards (such as 2% cash back on everything, or airline miles) so it's not really moving the needle on anything other than the fact that it's Amazon-branded. I see it as just another ploy to get you to spend more money in the Amazon ecosystem.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  That's assuming you don't use prime for anything else, like free fast shipping, or the TV shows.
  - bongobongo 7y ago
    I let my Prime subscription expire 6 months ago and I honestly haven't even noticed. The quality of the Amazon experience had already declined so much that I had already stopped using Amazon for most of my shopping/streaming. 2-3 years ago, I was making a purchase on Amazon at least once a month. These days I only use Amazon for price-matching at other stores.
    - asdff 7y ago
      They let their store rot, I dropped prime too a while ago.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tedmiston 7y ago
  Because of Amazon Household [1], you do not necessarily have to hold your own Prime membership to get the 5% back. Being on a Household Prime account is enough to get the full cash back on the regular Amazon credit card, so I'd expect the same would work here. Admittedly their card marketing websites do not make this super clear. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/myh/households https://www.amazon.com/myh/households

bongobongo 7y ago

It's worse than your typical secured credit card because it locks you into Amazon.com and services that use Amazon Pay. Basically, it's an agreement to buy Amazon products or products through Amazon until Amazon determines that your purchasing and payment habits reflect those of a person with good credit. People saying that it's great because you get 5% back on Amazon purchases are myopic. Nobody on HN would be celebrating the Starbucks Card Credit Builder where you get a 5% discount on purchases and can build credit but can only do so by purchasing products from Starbucks and its affiliates. Why? Because as others have said, there are already plenty of secured Visa/Mastercard cards out there that don't convert your capital to funnybux and lock you in to a particular vendor and its best buddies.

caconym_ 7y ago
On the other hand, Starbucks really only sells one sort of thing (food) while Amazon sells many things. Furthermore, Starbucks is a luxury, but on Amazon you can, I think, buy many of life's necessities at competitive prices. I agree that the motive is not necessarily pure. Furthermore I think Amazon is a huge force opposite sustainable economics, and that the American credit system, credit bureaus, and the symbiotic partners who encourage people to take on debt and prey on them in that vulnerable, owned state, are a diabolical construct engineered for social control and a crime against the American people. But, I think the comparison with Starbucks is not quite right. This is short-sightedly better and long-sightedly worse, for a lot of the same reasons.
- bongobongo 7y ago
  You're right that it wasn't a good analogy. More like the Wal-Mart Store Card Credit Builder.
  - freetime2 7y ago
    A Wal-Mart Store Card Credit builder that gave 5% cash back would be a great product for a lot of people, and just as worthy of “celebration” as this Amazon card. I don’t have any problems with store cards in general. I see them as a mutually beneficial agreement between retailers and frequent customers. It allows the retailer to capture a portion of the transaction revenue that would normally go to a third party (and some extra data about the customer), and in return pass on some of the savings to the customer in the form of discounts and rewards.

lxe 7y ago

It's secured manually by a deposit, which dictates your credit line. If you don't pay it back, the bank keeps the deposit. "Normal" cards are not backed by anything.

gwbas1c 7y ago

It's not a credit card. (It's not Visa, Mastercard, or Amex)

adrianmonk 7y ago
It's just a terminology thing, so not terribly important, but these types of cards are called "store cards" or "retail cards", and they are usually considered to be credit cards, despite having some differences from regular credit cards. This card seems to allow you carry a balance from one month to the next, so that means it isn't a "charge card" which must be paid in full every month: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_card