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When making a purchase on your Absa Credit Card, you can choose between a straight or budget option.

What is the difference?

• When you make a payment and select the straight repayment facility, it means that you start to repay the purchase within the next month.
  • Depending on the status of your account, you generally do not incur interest on qualifying spend within the first 55/57/60 days, depending on your product and bank.
  • You need to repay a minimum percentage of your outstanding balance every month, plus agreed fees and interest at your contracted rate when you took up your credit card.  The minimum percentage payable once again depends on your product and bank, but can be either 3%, 5% or 10%. At Absa the minimum repayment percentage is 3%.
    
    
• When you make a payment selecting the budget (extended terms) repayment facility, you are choosing to pay the purchase amount back over a selected period of time in set instalments.
  • The minimum repayment percentage applicable to straight payments will not apply. The budget transaction amount is divided by the number of months selected, and every month your credit card payment due will be the sum of the budget amount/transaction repayment premium (plus the associated interest) plus the minimum repayment amount on the straight facility.
  • The minimum amount for a budget transaction on an Absa Credit Card is R300.
  • You can choose a term between 3 and 60 months (3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48 and 60) when the transaction is set up via a merchant or Absa card division, and 6 to 48 months when you structure the transaction via Absa online banking.
    
  • Interest on the budget transaction is charged from day one.
  • Your credit facility is allocated overall between your straight and budget transactions. For budget transactions – the full purchase amount of the budget transactions is deducted from your total available credit facility.

What to know about the budget facility

• Your contracted interest rate applies to both budget and straight transactions.
• If you need to buy a big-ticket item such as a television or computer and you’d like to repay it over a specific period, you could consider using the budget facility.
• This facility can be compared to taking out a term loan where you repay in an agreed number of instalments, which means that you know exactly when you will have paid off the item in full, provided that you do not miss any repayments.
• Consider the cost of interest over the period and whether it makes sense to use the budget facility based on the cost of the item.
• Consider selecting the shortest budget term that you can manage to avoid interest accruing over a longer term.
• It is important not to miss a payment at any time as additional interest and penalties may apply and your credit bureau profile may be negatively impacted. Setting up a debit order for your credit card account can assist you to avoid missing payments.
• It is possible to decrease your outstanding balance on your budget facility by paying more than the minimum amount monthly and you can also select to pay off the full outstanding budget transaction amount at any time, or to convert it to a straight transaction.
• Certain transactions such as fuel, cannot be purchased on the budget facility.

Phone the number on the back of your card for assistance or for changes to your facility or structured transactions.