A Personal Finance Revolution? Why Credit Card Applications Are Faster Online

When applying for a new credit card your first thought may be that you are going to have to spend a good few days trailing from bank to bank looking for the right deal and then making an application. Nowadays, with the Internet, this needn't be the case. It is far simpler to apply online, but is it really any less time consuming? The answer has to be yes for, without a doubt, the Internet has inexorably speeded up everything from shopping to buying a holiday including making an application for any financial service that you could dream of. So let us take a look at online credit card applications and see just how much faster they are than a similar offline application.

Finding the right card for you is going to be the first step in any application process. You are going to need to have a careful look at what cards are on offer and which is the most suited to your needs. Offline this is going to be an almost insurmountable task as you are going to have to visit umpteen branches and read through the literature that they provide. This is clearly going to be a time consuming task. Online you can visit a financial services site, such as fool.co.uk, which provides up to date, impartial reviews of all of the major cards available along with some of the more obscure that you may not even have considered. Nowadays there are also a number of great credit card deals that are only available online. In moments you can do something that is impossible offline. What's more, you can 'read around' the Internet for each card to get a much clearer picture than you will be able to from a bank’s own literature.

The second time saving reason for an online credit card application has to be that you can apply from the convenience of your own home without having to travel anywhere. If you were to apply offline you would have to spend perhaps a day getting to the branch and making your application. Remember that online you can apply for cards provided by lenders that aren't even in your local area or perhaps even in the same country.

When making an application there is always the possibility that you will be asked details about your financial circumstances that you have failed to consider. As you are applying from the comfort of your own home when making an online credit card application, it is a simple matter of looking through your paperwork. Once again, if you are in a bank, this will be impossible unless you have brought all your paperwork with you generally leads to one of two outcomes. You will either need to revisit the bank again or be sent away with a form to fill out and send for yourself; in effect your entire trip will have been a complete waste of time.

Finally the third major time consideration is the time that it takes for the application to be processed and approved. If applying offline the form will need to be sent through the post. It will then wait in a pile of similar forms to be inputted into a computer and then considered. The irony is that the form is often inputted on the same system that you use when applying online. Online credit card applications effectively 'cut out the middle man'. For this offline process to be completed it is going to take at least a week but it is more likely to take much, much longer. Most online applications are approved instantaneously.

Once approval has been given you will then be sent your card, which is going to take the same time no matter what (in most cases under a week). With an online credit card application a week is all you need to wait. An offline application may have taken as much as two or three weeks. If, for whatever reason, your application is rejected you will then need to go through the whole process again. This means another couple of weeks for an offline application, or perhaps ten minutes for an online one. When looked at in this light it is obvious that an online application is many times faster.

Struggling to understand or worried about online credit card application? Stephanie Hamilton, a freelance writer who regularly contributes personal finance articles to Money-Now.co.uk, enjoys breaking down the technical jargon surrounding these deals. If you're looking for further advice about credit cards visit the FSA run Money Made Clear website.

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