About
A card catalogue that says what it knows
PointsExplained compares credit cards in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, India and Portugal. Where we hold a figure, the page prints it. Where we do not, the page says so.
What PointsExplained is
At its core is a catalogue of credit cards for each country: fees, interest rates, earn rates, welcome offers and application links. Card pages, category lists, comparisons, persona guides and the quiz are all generated from that catalogue by code. No one writes or scores a card review by hand.
Where the figures come from. Card figures are read from documents issuers publish — product pages, UK summary boxes, India's “most important terms” documents, Portuguese price lists and other terms documents — and from public data that regulators require or publish, such as Canada's FCAC comparison tool, the US CFPB's credit card agreement database and Australia's Consumer Data Right product data. Some figures were extracted from issuer pages by automated tools, including an AI model.
What gets printed. Not every figure in the catalogue has been checked against a document, so the pages apply evidence rules: a zero annual fee prints only where a check that read the fee from the issuer’s terms confirmed it, and a zero foreign transaction fee or a 0% interest rate only where a document states it. Otherwise the slot reads “Not confirmed”. A card page shows a verification date only where one is on record.
How rankings work. The quiz and the guides built on it rank cards by rules computed from the catalogue, the same for every card; a guide built on a researched shortlist says so on the page. Our methodology sets them out in full.
How the site is funded. PointsExplained has no affiliate partnerships, carries no advertising and earns nothing from card issuers. See our affiliate disclosure.
The rules we hold ourselves to
Say the number or say nothing
A figure we cannot back is shown as “Not confirmed”, never as a zero. A missing fee costs you a click to the issuer; a wrong zero can cost you the whole fee.
Rankings are computed
The quiz, and the guides built on it, rank cards by the same published rules for every card: estimated rewards from earn rates, a welcome offer the page can print, and the annual fee. No card carries a hand-given score.
No one pays to rank
PointsExplained has no affiliate partnerships and earns nothing from card issuers, so no ranking is shaped by a commission.
Seven markets, local figures
Each country edition — CA, US, UK, AU, BR, IN, PT — lists that market's cards in its own currency.
Riya Arora
Founder, PointsExplained
With a background spanning psychology, computer science, marketing, and insurance, Riya Arora is equal parts behavior nerd, data nerd, and points nerd. A recovering ‘any-card-will-do’ spender turned rewards optimizer, she reads the fine print so you don’t have to — in pursuit of the perfect redemption (and a free flight or two).
Riya is the named byline on our newsroom coverage; news summaries are drafted with AI assistance and follow our editorial guidelines and corrections policy.
Get in touch
Questions about a figure, the methodology, or a correction? Email us.
hello@pointsexplained.com