Latitude Gem Visa Credit Card

Pauline Hatch

Pauline is a personal finance expert at CreditCard.com.au, with 9 years in money, budgeting and property reporting under her belt. Ask Pauline a Question about this card.

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The Latitude Gem Visa

With a range of interest free options available, the Latitude Gem Visa is most definitely a shopper’s credit card. While other cards may provide interest free introductory offers, this card allows cardholders to benefit from interest free shopping at any time, with 0% interest for six months on any purchase over $250, and longer interest free plans on purchases made at participating stores.

This card also comes with travel perks, giving you 10% off selected hotels at Expedia and Wotif when you book with the Latitude Gem Visa

What we love...

Used correctly, the Latitude Gem Visa could help you save big on interest. As an everyday credit card, the Latitude Gem Visa lets you enjoy up to 55 days interest free on all your everyday purchases worth below $250, as long as you clear your balance both for the statement before the purchases were made, and for the statement on which the purchases are listed.

On larger purchases of $250 or more, you can benefit from some extra breathing room, with 0% interest for six months. That gives you a good long time to repay your purchase, while paying nothing in interest. You don’t need to set up anything to enjoy this interest free period – all purchases over $250 made on the card will automatically receive it.

But that’s not all. If you use your Latitude Gem Visa at any of the card’s participating retail partners and service providers – such as The Good Guys, JB-HiFi and Apple – you can take advantage of even longer 0% interest free plans. Simply present your card and the salesperson will let you know which 0% Interest Payment Plans are currently available.

You can then choose from three repayment plan options. With the Interest Free plan, you will make minimum monthly payments; with the Instalment Interest Free plan, you will pay equal monthly payments; and with the Buy Now, Pay Later plan, there are no set payments required during the interest free period, so you pay what you want, when you want.

When you take into account the fact that this card removed its annual fee and replaced it with a monthly account service fee, it’s quite a pretty good deal if you have less than $10 outstanding balance each month. As long as you maintain your balances to the threshold and avoid interest charges, you could be paying nothing for the card, while taking advantage of the long term interest-free offers.

What’s not so great...

We’ve talked a lot about how Latitude Gem Visa provides you access to a range of interest free offers at hundreds of Australia’s best brands and retailers; however you could be stung with an expired interest Free purchase rate of 29.99% p.a. if you don’t meet the repayments. As long as you deal with these correctly – paying them off before they start to accrue interest – they can obviously be very beneficial.

With the monthly account service fee of $10.95 to balances of $10 or more, this adds to the things you need to be mindful of every month to keep your card active. If balances are left unpaid, it could pile up to $131.40 a year.

Why should you choose this card?

If you want to save on interest when using your credit card, the Latitude Gem Visa could certainly help you do that. But, you need to be smart and you need to be organised if you want to take advantage of the various interest free options on offer. Be sure to read the small print, and know exactly what needs to be paid off and when.

Aside from its potential to save on interest, the Latitude Gem Visa does have a few nice features up its sleeve. Of course, being a Visa card, it offers all the card features that come as standard on a Visa, such as contactless payments through Visa PayWave, and card security in the form of fraud detection and zero liability, and Verified by Visa for online shopping.

Overall Rating

A shopper’s credit card that could help you save on interest, the Latitude Gem Visa offers up to 55 days interest free on purchases under $250, 0% interest for six months on purchases over $250, and longer interest free plans at participating retailers.