Credit Building > How does the Fluid credit card work?

How does the Fluid credit card work?

Wollit Team2 minute read · Updated 30th June 2024

The Fluid Credit Card is a balance transfer credit card provided by NewDay, a company that offers many kinds of credit cards for people looking to improve their credit.

The Fluid card helps you improve your credit by giving you more time to pay your bills from other credit cards while taking a break from paying interest charges.

What are the Fluid credit card features?

Fluid gives you 0% interest for 9 months on balance transfers from other credit cards.
Fluid only gives you 60 days to transfer to qualify for this promotional period.
The transfer fee is 3% if you transfer in the first 60 days, then 5% afterwards.
After 9 months, the APR went from 0% to 34.94%.
Depending on your profile, the initial credit limit starts between £250 and £4,000.

These features are standard for a balance transfer card, but they do seem somewhat worse than what other similar cards offer:

Most balance transfer credit cards give you 13-26 months of 0% interest.
Most balance transfer credit cards also allow you to make the transfer within 3 months instead of 60 days, as Fluid does.
Most balance transfer credit cards also offer lower APR, usually in the 29-35% range.

Who is eligible for Fluid?

Fluid has pretty flexible eligibility requirements:

You have to be over 18;
You have to live in the UK at a "permanent address" (we don't know if this means that only British citizens and permanent residents may be accepted, but it seems like it);
You must have a current UK bank or building society account;
And have no bankruptcy proceedings against you.

However, you are not eligible for a Fluid credit card if:

You have declared bankruptcy in the past 18 months;
You had a CCJ in the past year;
Or if you have already taken another card from NewDay in the past year, like another Fluid, Marbles, Opus, or Aqua card.

In fact, even if you already have one of these cards but took them more than 12 months ago, you still can't transfer balances from them to your new Fluid card.

Is Fluid a credit-building card?

Yes. Fluid is technically a balance transfer credit card for people with bad credit. This explains why Fluid has to offer slightly worse terms: it has to compensate for the risk that you'll miss your payments or default again.

The way Fluid helps you repair your credit is simple:

If you're struggling to pay down other cards because of interest, you can transfer those balances to Fluid.
Then you have 9 months to pay them down while interest stops accruing.
Theoretically, this can help you build a history of timely payments without risking missing one because of the snowballing interest charges.

That being said, there are balance transfer credit cards for bad credit that offer a longer 0% interest period and better terms. Virgin Money, for example, offers 16 months of 0% interest payments and only charges an APR of 24.9% after the zero-interest period ends. Of course, this doesn't mean that you can qualify for either—it's best to check using their eligibility checkers first.