The Egg Money card has been available for some time and continues to give you 1% back on ALL your purchasing up to a limit of £200 from March to Feb each year (or in year of opening until the end of February).

Rather alarmingly I’ve hit my £200 cashback limit and am having to use my daughter’s Egg Money card till the end of next month.

As with all credit cards you should endeavour to pay off your full balance each month, preferably by direct debit from your regular bank account so you don’t forget. If you don’t pay off the full balance you get clobbered for full interest on the entire balance outstanding until paid off. The Egg Money rate is currently 7.9% .You do get 50 days interest free credit between bills, which is about average.

The only way this card is different from other credit cards is that if you overpay or whenever it is in credit they pay you interest, currently 4% Whilst this could be handy, 4% gross isn’t the best savings rate around so it is better to be organised and just pay off the full balance only when you have to – alternatively keep it all in-house and open an Egg Savings account that currently pays 5.25% gross. Keep that topped up purely to finance the Egg Money card.

If you are in credit you can make cash withdrawals at ATM’s with no service charges or fees.

A clever feature is that you can request weekly text alerts of you current balance, which some people might find useful/alarming/worrying/heart attack triggering.

The on-line services are excellent. You can have just the Egg Money account without any other Egg products and view it on line, or you can view it alongside your other Egg savings products.

With Egg there is a secure email facility, which I have used occasionally, if you tick the box they will acknowledge your question and email you when you have a reply, that you pick up by logging into Egg. My responses have always been within 48 hours.

I’ve contacted them by phone and you do fairly quickly get through to a real human and they have always been courteous, polite, helpful and carried out a request without fail.

You can pay off your Egg Money account by BACS from your regular account, by DD as mentioned above or manually whenever you wish allowing the usual three/four days for it to arrive. Alternatively if you also have an Egg savings account you can just transfer the money, however still allow two days for it to credit the Egg Money account.

Another reason I like the Egg Money card is that I use it for card tarting. When I apply to take advantage of any 0% interest free credit cards I request the balance on the new card be transferred to Egg Money. The reason being I can just send a secure email to Egg to transfer out onto my savings account, no fees and no questions asked, mind you it takes up to five days. You can’t do this on line for some reason.

The on line Egg Money Card statements are fairly clear, last statements and recent transactions are always available. Recently it has been difficult to print out as the printer-friendly button seems to have disappeared but just printing the whole webpage is good enough. There is a slightly gimmicky analysis of your statements, showing spend by: Household, Travel & Transport, Essentials, Abroad, Going Out, High Street & Web, Cash, Other Stuff – bit pointless but fun I suppose.

Security of Egg website is probably as good as any others. To log into all services, you need to remember your first name, surname, postcode, date of birth, mother’s maiden name and password - so you have got to be pretty unlucky for anyone to know all of those. You can amend your password on line and you can view your PIN. You can amend your PIN at most ATM’s

There are three rewards for having your card, which you can check out but will probably quickly realise are of no use to you: Internet CashBacks, Unforgettable Experiences, and Privileges

The Internet cashbacks are 50% cashback at 0800flowers, 15% off Figleaves, 20% off buyagift, 10% cashback at Virgin Wines, 5% cashback at CDWOW, 5% cashback at Dixons, 10% off IwantOneofThose, 10% cashback at Trruprint. None of these have been any good for me, had better rewards for shopping through other cashback sites.

The current Unforgettable experience is chance to win a Valentine Day trip to Monaco. Still I suppose someone has to win

Privileges are 10% off Holiday Autos, 15% off BP Airport Parking, 5% off Thomas Cook, 25% cashback with an Airport Lounge Pass, £50 cashback at Virgin.net, 10% off Egg Home Insurance, 10% off Egg Travel Insurance, 0% interest on your Egg premium for Car Insurance. None of these offers have either been of any use to me or are highly uncompetitive.

The card can be used abroad as with any card, but the moral is don’t because the transaction and currency conversion rate will be loaded. (Use the Nationwide debit card for foreign travel).

The only problem I occasionally have with the card is that if you take something back to a shop it sometimes won’t accept credits back onto the card. This is an ongoing problem at our local Tesco, but now they know us they give us cash back anyway or occasionally I have had the credit put back on a debit card. This of course can be to your benefit as you will have earned your 1% cashback and won’t subsequently lose it with the credit transaction.

So overall the BIG advantage of this Egg Money Card, a credit card which pays you interest on any credit balance, is the 1% cashback.

This is my regular card and is highly recommended. Long live the 1%