How SwipeStables reads a card
Every number on this site was read from an issuer document by hand, carries the link it came from and the date it was checked. This page is the whole method — short enough to actually read.
Where the numbers come from
We read the issuer's own pages: fee schedules, terms of service, help-center articles. Nothing is taken from reviews, affiliates or other aggregators. Each of the 1598 recorded values stores the exact URL and a quote from the document, and the date we read it — that is the small link and date you see next to every row on a card page.
77 cards are tracked across 37 parameters, from 33 issuer documents.
Grades
Every value carries a grade, shown as a coloured dot:
What we refuse to do
These rules cost us pretty numbers and keep the comparison honest:
"Up to" is not a rate. A card advertising "up to 10% cashback" ranks by its base rate — the rate every holder actually gets. If no base rate is published, the card does not rank on cashback at all.
Absence from a ban list is not availability. A card is "confirmed" for your country only when the issuer publishes it. Otherwise it is shown as not listed — even when it would probably work.
Unknown is never zero. When a fee is not published, the yearly estimate says so instead of quietly assuming it away.
The yearly number
"Earns ≈ $240/yr" is arithmetic, not opinion: issuance + subscription + top-up and conversion fees + FX on the foreign share of your spend − cashback at the base rate with its cap, over 12 months at the monthly spend you pick. The full calculation is printed on every card page, line by line, so you can check it.
Updates
The base is published in dated releases. Every value keeps its observation date, and when an issuer changes a fee we record both the old and the new value — the history is kept, not overwritten. Current release: 2026-09-02.1.
How we make money
Some cards pay a referral fee when you open them through our links. It never moves a ranking, a verdict or a number — the maths above runs the same for cards that pay us nothing. Referral links are marked with rel="sponsored".
On-chain usage volumes shown in "Top by volume" come from Paymentscan and are credited on every page that uses them.