Retail Trade Account

[Anonymous]

Hello, I am new to this community so please forgive me if this is an obvious question.  Can someone please define a Retail Trade Account for me, I received an alert on a Retail Trade Account, and I can't quite figure it out.  Is it a non Visa/MC credit card?  Maybe a furniture store account?

Thanks

[Revelate]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hello, I am new to this community so please forgive me if this is an obvious question.  Can someone please define a Retail Trade Account for me, I received an alert on a Retail Trade Account, and I can't quite figure it out.  Is it a non Visa/MC credit card?  Maybe a furniture store account?

Thanks

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Yup, or a store card or similar potentially.  I assume this was on Transunion?  They count them seperately for all that they appear to be scored identically from a revolving utilization perspective in one lump sum calculation.

[Thomas_Thumb]

Just to clarify, AMEX and Discover aren't retail cards. At least I have never seen them classified as such.

Interestingly, TU offers credit based insurance scores (CBIS). I don't think the other two CRAs have such a product.

Could this influence how TU tweaks Fico relative to the other two CRAs?

[Revelate]

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@Thomas_Thumb wrote:

Just to clarify, AMEX and Discover aren't retail cards. At least I have never seen them classified as such.

Interestingly, TU offers credit based insurance scores (CBIS). I don't think the other two CRAs have such a product.

Could this influence how TU tweaks Fico relative to the other two CRAs?

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Hrm, I think that's unlikely as their insurance models are utterly seperate from FICO if I recall their matrix correctly.

I doubt there's any correlation between the two: the insurance models are developed in house, and there's likely restrictions as to how much they can modify FICO and still call it FICO.

At least for my file TU/EX seem to be pretty similar, EQ is the odd one out in how it handles revolving utilization on my file (number of revolving tradelines with balance), also on cashnocredit's file IIRC (with his Amex).

[Anonymous]

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Hi Revelate, TT.  Can you guys clarify what the status is of co-branded cards?

I.e. a card that is issued by a store (e.g. a Best Buy card or a Home Depot card) but also has the logo of a major CC on it (for these purposes Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover).

Is such a card ever considered a retail account when insurance companies are counting the number of such accounts?  I know that the insurance models penalize you for having store cards (as opposed to say a Chase Freedom Visa, a Citi Doublecash Mastercard, etc.) but I have never been clear whether cards that are somehow both major and store at the same time are ever classified as retail.

It doesn't affect me since all my cards are pure major CC's, but I have always been curious.