On September 16, 2026, the Federal Reserve raised its target range for the federal funds rate by a quarter point, to 3.75% to 4.00%, in a unanimous vote. It was the first increase since July 2023. The next day the U.S. prime rate moved from 6.75% to 7.00%, and with it every variable APR on every 0% balance transfer card went up by 25 basis points. That part was automatic and nobody announced it. What did not happen automatically was the update to the pages that tell you what the rate is.
This piece records which issuer pages had caught up and which had not, as of the dates we read them. It also records that our own tracker was behind on two issuers until October 30. We would rather say that than pretend otherwise.
Why a Fed move changes the rate on a 0% card
A 0% balance transfer card has two rates. The introductory rate is 0% for a fixed period. The rate after that, the one you pay on whatever is left when the period ends, is variable, and on every card we track it is built the same way: the issuer adds a fixed margin to the prime rate. Chase’s cardmember agreement, for example, prices its cards at prime plus 11.49% to 22.24%. Citi’s pricing disclosure for the Diamond Preferred card states prime plus 9.74% to 20.49%. The margin is written into the card’s terms and rarely changes. Prime changes when the Fed changes its target, usually the next business day, and the card’s rate follows on the next billing cycle.
So when prime went from 6.75% to 7.00% on September 17, the floor on Chase’s Slate, Freedom Unlimited and Freedom Flex went from 18.24% to 18.49%. Citi Diamond Preferred went from 16.49% to 27.24% to 16.74% to 27.49%. Every other card moved the same quarter point. None of the issuers had to do anything; the arithmetic did it for them.
Which issuer pages had updated, and when we saw it
We read every issuer’s own disclosure for the ten cards on our tracker on September 23 and 25, and again on October 30. Here is what the pages showed on each date.
| Issuer page | Late September read | October 30 read | What that tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chase product pages (Slate, Freedom Unlimited, Freedom Flex) | September 23: our read recorded the floor at 18.24%, the pre-increase figure, six days after prime moved | 18.49% to 27.99% on the Freedom cards and 18.49% to 28.49% on Slate. The product pages compute the APR as prime plus margin on the page itself, and show the 7.00% input | Chase’s card-level pricing and terms documents are dated September 22 and already carried 7.00%. So whichever Chase surface we read on September 23 lagged Chase’s own pricing sheet by at least a day; by October 30 everything but the general agreement agreed |
| Chase general cardmember agreement (COL00095) | Not read | Still states its APRs are based on a 6.75% prime rate as of June 30, 2026 | The general agreement lags both the product pages and the card-level pricing documents. The margins in it are still correct; the example figures are not |
| Citi pricing disclosures (Diamond Preferred, Simplicity) | Not read; our last read was August 2, before the increase | 16.74% to 27.49% and 17.74% to 28.49%, stated against a 7.0% prime rate | Current on October 30. We cannot say when it updated |
| American Express rates and fees pages (Blue Cash Everyday, Blue Cash Preferred) | September 25: 19.74% to 28.74% | 19.74% to 28.74%, stated as prime plus 12.74% to 21.74% | Already at the post-increase figures within eight days. Amex reprices on each billing period’s closing date, so its pages carry no fixed prime basis to go stale |
| Wells Fargo product pages (Reflect, Active Cash) | September 25: 17.74%, 24.24%, 28.49% and 18.74%, 24.74%, 28.74% | Unchanged, and those figures equal the disclosed margins plus 7.00% | Already current within eight days |
| Wells Fargo terms and conditions pages (Reflect, Active Cash) | Not read | Still cite prime at 6.75% and show 17.49%, 23.99%, 28.24% and 18.49%, 24.49%, 28.49%, 25 basis points below the product pages | Not updated 43 days after the move. The two Wells Fargo pages for the same card disagree with each other |
| U.S. Bank Shield disclosure | September 25: 17.24% to 28.24% | 17.24% to 28.24%, disclosure dated 10/2026 | Consistent with 7.00% prime. U.S. Bank does not publish its margin, so this is the one card where we cannot show the arithmetic |
Update, November 1, 2026: Wells Fargo’s terms and conditions pages for Reflect and Active Cash now state ‘As of 11/01/2026, the U.S. Prime Rate is 7.00%’ and show the same APRs as the product pages. Every issuer page in the table above is now current.
Three things stand out. Wells Fargo, Amex and U.S. Bank had their product pages right within eight days, and Chase’s card-level pricing documents were dated September 22, five days after the move. Yet the Chase figure we read on September 23 was still the old one, and Chase’s general agreement has not been updated at all, so within a single issuer different documents moved at different speeds. And Wells Fargo now publishes two different APRs for the same card depending on which of its own pages you open, a situation that will persist until it refreshes the terms pages.
Our own figures were behind too
Our terms tracker carried the Chase floor at 18.24% and the Citi ranges at their pre-increase values until October 30. The Chase figure was what Chase’s own page showed when we read it on September 23, so it was accurate on the day it was recorded and wrong from whenever Chase updated. The Citi figures were from an August 2 read that we had flagged on the page as overdue. Both are corrected now, and the change log on the tracker records the correction with the cause.
The lesson we took from it is that a page which records what an issuer displays will always be exposed to this. An issuer’s displayed APR can be stale on the issuer’s own site, as Wells Fargo’s terms pages are today. So the tracker now records the margin over prime for every card, taken from the issuer’s disclosure, alongside the displayed figure. When prime moves next, we can compute the new range the same day and flag any issuer page that has not caught up, instead of inheriting its lag.
What it means if you are comparing cards right now
The rate you revert to after the introductory period is a quarter point higher than a page written before mid-September says it is, and that includes some of the issuers’ own pages. On a $5,000 balance left over at the end of a 0% period, 25 basis points is about $12.50 a year in interest, so the dollar effect of this one move is small. The effect that is not small is the habit it exposes: the post-intro APR on comparison sites, in card reviews and in older issuer documents is often a figure that was copied once and never re-derived. If a page does not say when it read the issuer’s disclosure, you cannot know which prime rate its number was built on.
Two practical rules follow. First, if a 0% card matters to you because of the rate after the intro period, check the issuer’s current application disclosure, not its marketing page and not a review, and look for the line that states the prime rate the figures are based on. Second, if two sources disagree by exactly 0.25%, the lower one was probably written before September 17.
One unrelated change landed in the same window and is worth separating from the rate move. American Express has stopped committing to a fixed 0% period on its Blue Cash cards. The disclosure now says 6 to 18 months, set at approval, and warns it may be as short as 6. That is not a prime rate effect; it is a change to how Amex prices the offer, and it makes those two cards harder to compare on the term most people shop by.
Sources
- Federal Reserve, FOMC statement of September 16, 2026, federalreserve.gov
- Federal Reserve, H.15 Selected Interest Rates, release of October 29, 2026 (bank prime loan rate 7.00%)
- Chase, Slate, Freedom Unlimited and Freedom Flex product pages, the card-level pricing and terms documents dated September 22, 2026, and the general cardmember agreement, chase.com, read September 23 and October 30, 2026
- Citi, Diamond Preferred and Simplicity pricing and information disclosures, citi.com, read October 30, 2026
- American Express, Blue Cash Everyday and Blue Cash Preferred rates and fees pages, americanexpress.com, read September 25 and October 30, 2026
- Wells Fargo, Reflect and Active Cash product pages and terms and conditions pages, wellsfargo.com, read September 25 and October 30, 2026
- U.S. Bank, Shield Visa product page and terms and conditions, usbank.com, read September 25 and October 30, 2026
- BalanceTransfers.com, Balance Transfer Terms Tracker, verification status and change log