Discover Touts Card that Rewards Monthly Payments

The credit card arena is an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of hidden fees and customer rewards. It can be tough to stand out from the crowd — especially when you’re Discover Card, a card that hasn’t always been known for being relevent since the mid-’80s.

Big things are happening for Discover Financial Services, however. The credit card will be spun off by Morgan Stanley this summer, and this past Tuesday the card launched a program that rewards card holders who pay their balance on time.

Discover is calling the card "Motiva" — which has a vague, European sophistication sound to it, like the Hyundai Elantra or the fabled rich Corinthian leather Ricardo Montleban purred about. The Motiva will pay one month’s interest to cardholders for each six straight months of ontime payments.

What differentiates Motiva from other cards that offer rewards like cash-back and airline points is the balance aspect. Disover’s Motiva rewards folks with balances, rather than rewarding accounts that are paid in full.

The card charges interest at an annual percentage rate of 13.99 percent, a spokeswoman said.

Discover, which struggled mightily with bad loans about five years ago, is back in the game, and is looking at the Motiva card to strengthen its position in the credit card market. Critics of Motiva, however, see it as simply another way of encouraging people to pile on debt.