Credit Cards Combat Rising Petrol Prices

The cost of fuel has spiralled this year, but you can help offset this by taking out the right type of cashback credit card.

A litre of unleaded fuel cost 117.2p on average on June 11 2008, according to Petrolprices.com, and is tipped to rise further, however credit cards issued by Shell and Asda offer fuel incentives that could provide a substantial discount for Britain's hard hit families.

The Shell MasterCard from Citi currently offers a 3% rebate on Shell fuel purchases with 1% on all other spending. This is alongside a 0% balance transfer deal that runs for 12 months.

When paying for fuel at Asda with the Asda MasterCard, customers can receive a rebate of 2p per litre. The card also offers a 0% balance transfer deal for nine months.

The Barclaycard Platinum Cashback Mastercard/Visa also has a 0.5% cashback on supermarket and petrol spends until January 2010, that's once its introductory 4% cashback wears off at the end of July this year.

Esther James, credit card analyst at price comparison website Moneyfacts.co.uk, said: 'Rebates for both cards have to be redeemed in a Shell or Asda petrol station respectively. However, in today's market, even a small saving can make a big difference, so consumers should be looking for any opportunity to relieve their money pressures.'

For example, if you spend £35 filling up your car, you would receive just over £1 back on the Shell card and approximately 60p on the Asda card. The Shell offer negates over 12% of the substantial increase in unleaded fuel prices. Petrol has shot up in the past seven weeks; the price of unleaded has jumped 8.1p per litre from 107.8p, according to petrolprices.com. The price of diesel has increased a whopping 15% over this timeframe.

Alternatively, another good way to offset the steep fuel increases is to use a standard cashback card, such as the Barclaycard Platinum Cashback, which in some cases can offer even higher savings, albeit over a shorter timeframe.

Other options include the American Express Platinum Moneyback card, which has a cashback introductory deal of 5% for three months, followed by a standard cashback rate of 0.5%. The Capital One Platinum Cashback World Mastercard has a 4% rate until September 1, followed by a standard rate of 1%.

If you are struggling to pay bills incurred because of rising fuel costs, then rather than seeing high interest rates make your debt spiral, as you only pay off the minimum, you could try to sign up to a good balance transfer deal. This will enable you to freeze the debt at 0% interest while you try and clear it.