Q: Does my Discover card have an over the limit fee if I exceed my credit limit?
A: No. As of February, 2010, no credit card company charges an over the limit fee for consumer credit cards. This is the result of the Credit Card Reform Act that was signed into law in May, 2009. Before the law went into effect, Discover did charge a $15 over the limit fee for cardholders with balances below $500 and $39 for balances over that.
While the Credit Card Reform Act did abolish over the limit fees for consumer credit cards, it did not specify that this would be done for business credit cards. For this reason, some credit card companies may still charge over the limit fees for business credit cards.
Others may not charge the fee, or they may do it on a transaction-by-transaction basis (allowing the cardholder to go over one time and not charging the fee, then charging it the next time.) Still others may not charge the over the fee limit at all, but will not honor transactions if the current balance is too high.
If you don’t know which method your business credit card company uses, you may want to find out. You can do this by calling the number on the back of the card and asking exactly what their policy is concerning over the limit fees.
