Key Secured Review

Who is the Key Secured Card for?

The Key Secured card’s main purpose is to help cardholders build their credit score. This target group contains a variety of different individuals, including:

• Those who have no or very little credit history
• Anyone with a damaged credit score
• First-time credit card owners
• People who do not want to pay an annual fee
• People looking to graduate to a rewards card

The Key Secured card’s main purpose is to build a person’s credit score, so there are no rewards programs or bonuses. However, cardholders who make all of their payments on time will have the benefit of increasing their credit score and can then graduate to other cards that offer more rewards.

This card offers credit-building services with no annual fee. It requires cardholders to make a minimum deposit of $300 in order to ensure they have money to cover their purchases. It is very important to make payments on time, because not only would not doing so hurt your credit score, but you would also have to pay a fee of up to $39.

Another feature of this card is that there is no intro APR of 0%, rather the APR for both balance transfers and purchases is 22.99% (variable). This means that all cardholders must take caution when engaging in these types of transactions since they will face high-interest rates. Additionally, there is a 23.99% APR for cash advances which cardholders should also take into consideration.

Ultimately, this card’s restrictive features make it great for anyone wanting to improve or build their credit score.

Security Features

Along with its credit-building features, the Key Secured card has an assortment of tools to protect the cardholder’s information and to increase account security. Primarily, if the cardholder notices that they have misplaced their card, they can easily lock their card to ensure no fraudulent charges are made.

Additionally, there is the option to set up account alerts. This makes it easy for cardholders to be notified if there are any suspicious charges on their account. Account alerts can also be edited to remind the cardholder to make monthly payments to avoid paying the late fee.

Another important safety feature is the Identity Theft Protection element. By owning this card, Key bank will scour the internet to see if your card information is being used anywhere. They will also help to fix your credit score with credit rating agencies if anyone does use your card and puts wrongful charges on your account.

Finally, this card has a zero liability policy. Not only will you not have to worry about your credit score being affected by fraudulent charges, but also you also won’t have to be concerned about paying those fees either. The bank will cover these charges and you will have zero accountability.

Fees

While this card does not require an annual fee, there are other fees to consider. There is a foreign transaction fee of 3%, making it not ideal for frequent travelers. There is also a balance transfer fee of 3% or $10, whichever is greater. This, paired with the balance transfer APR of 22.99% makes balance transfers quite expensive, so potential cardholders should consider this.

It is also very important for cardholders to make payments on time. Since this is a credit building card, missing fee deadlines will only make it harder to upgrade to a rewards card. Additionally, there is a late fee of up to $39, so you will have to pay more out of pocket for missing these payments.

Conclusion

Although this card does not provide a rewards program or any bonuses, it allows cardholders to focus on improving their credit scores so that an upgrade to a card with more rewards is possible. 

Additionally, the security features this card provides allow cardholders to rest assured that others will not ruin their credit score, and therefore card users can focus on improving this number on their own.

We recommend this card to anyone with a bad credit score who wants to improve their score before advancing to a card with more rewards. In order to enhance the cardholder’s ability to own a great rewards card after this one, it is extremely important that cardholders make their payments on time. This is made more likely by the $300 minimum deposit, but it is still the sole responsibility of the cardholder to make their payments in a timely manner. This will help tremendously to boost their score.