Which card is good to apply as First Card?

[Bharath]

Hello all. My friend who came recently from India got an SSN last week. He is planning to apply for a credit card. Which bank do you prefer? He doesn't biggest balances or 0 APR's. All he needs a card with min 300-400 limit so that he can start building his credit. So please tell me which one to apply and get easily approved..

Thanks in advance to you all...

[DI]

Capital One 

[creditwherecreditisdue]

Bearing in mind that the goal here is to build credit from scratch...

Does the individual in question have any money they can deposit? If so I would recommend starting a relationship with a well researched CU and depositing some funds. With that done they want to open a loan account secured by their own deposits and pay it back in six months. It is important to pay the loan back over the six months and not all at once. The purpose is to build a credit score - it will take six months to do that. After that the CU in question will most likely be agreeable to opening an unsecured CC account. You will also want to open another bank card and a nice store card like Macy's.

What you want to do is get around the no FICO/no CBR issue and get to three reporting TL's without resorting to starter cards that will not grow. You want to avoid the First Premiers and Millennium Banks of the world like the plaque. Stay away from sub-prime issuers. It is better to go with secured credit from a prime issuer that unsecured, sub-prime credit. This is going to take some time. Do not be in a hurry.

[smallfry]

Capital One Orchard and a store or gas card.

[creditwherecreditisdue]

Don't forget the person in question has zero credit file and no FICO score. Starting with a completely blank slate here.

[DI]

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@creditwherecreditisdue wrote:
Don't forget the person in question has zero credit file and no FICO score. Starting with a completely blank slate here.

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Cap One offer cards for young adults with limited to no credit history that comes with a $39 AF.  

[haulingthescoreup]

In the past, new arrivals to the US did very well with Cap One and with Bank of America, before they had FICO scores.

Another option is to join a credit union that offers secured cards. If OP's friend is attending a university or is employed by a firm that is associated with a credit union, that would be worth investigating.

[creditwherecreditisdue]

Cap1 may still be OK. The only problem could be a card that will not grow.

BofA is scary. I would steer clear of them these days unless you are bringing in 700+ credit and a fairly vanilla CBR. They are way too flaky to be trusted. Very much backtracking on decisions by them. Maybe they will be OK again when they figure out what they are doing.