Today, we’re launching a new promotion designed to help Petal members start 2021 on a high note by breaking one of the credit world’s most expensive habits: making only the minimum payment. 

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Paying only the minimum on your credit card bill may sometimes make short-term sense –it’s better than not paying your bill at all, for example, or paying late – but it’s a terrible long-term financial strategy: you could end up paying a fortune in additional interest, and it will take you much longer to pay down your debt – maybe even decades.

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Mainstream credit cards make it easy to fall into the minimum payment trap by suggesting “pay the minimum” as the default when you pay your bill. The longer you’re in debt and accruing interest, the better it is for their bottom line. 

The Petal app already takes a different approach, setting “pay the full balance” as the default option when you pay your monthly bill. If you can’t pay in full, we make it easy to understand exactly how much interest you’ll owe –in actual dollars and cents– based on the amount of balance you *can* pay. 

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Now, we’re taking it a step further by giving Petal members a rewarding new reason to pay more than the minimum. 

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Starting this month, Petal members who pay more than the minimum on their monthly billing cycle will be entered into a sweepstakes to have their credit card bill paid off, up to $500. We'll reward 100 lucky winners in total, choosing 50 winners this month and another 50 in February. (You can read the official rules for the initial sweepstakes here) 

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Paying more than the minimum isn’t just a catchy title for a promotion: it’s a good habit to get into, one recommended by virtually every credit expert (from CreditCards.com’s Ted Rossman and NerdWallet’s Claire Tsosie to John Ulzheimer and Beverly Harzog). It saves you money, pays down your debt faster, and helps build your credit score. Plus, it means you’ll give less money to us. :)

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All you’ve got to do is pay more than the minimum, and pay on time. That’s it. Do the right thing by your credit score, and you could start 2021 with fewer bills and a healthy new habit.

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Petal credit cards are issued by WebBank, Member FDIC.