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New Credit History

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Anonymous
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New Credit History

Hey guys

This is my question, I’ve only been living in America for 11 months, when I got here I opened a secured BofA credit card with my pssport (no itin, nothing) with 500 $ security deposit , at seven months they increased it to 700 hundred, at 9 months to 900 hundred and at 11 months they increased it to 2900 and returned my security desposit, one week ago I got my SSN and updated the information at the bank, and applied for a cash rewards credit card and got denied, may be because my credit history has not been transferred to my SSN, would any of you happen to know, how long it will take for my previous credit history to transfer to my SSN?
I also applied for a capital one platinum MasterCard ang got this message: “one last step! Good news, you’re almost approved, but we need additional information before we can open your account, we’ll contact you in 7-10 business days with more details” have any of gotten this message, if so, have you been approved or declined?
Thanks in advance
Message 1 of 15
14 REPLIES 14
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: New Credit History


@Anonymous wrote:
Hey guys

This is my question, I’ve only been living in America for 11 months, when I got here I opened a secured BofA credit card with my pssport (no itin, nothing) with 500 $ security deposit , at seven months they increased it to 700 hundred, at 9 months to 900 hundred and at 11 months they increased it to 2900 and returned my security desposit, one week ago I got my SSN and updated the information at the bank, and applied for a cash rewards credit card and got denied, may be because my credit history has not been transferred to my SSN, would any of you happen to know, how long it will take for my previous credit history to transfer to my SSN?
I also applied for a capital one platinum MasterCard ang got this message: “one last step! Good news, you’re almost approved, but we need additional information before we can open your account, we’ll contact you in 7-10 business days with more details” have any of gotten this message, if so, have you been approved or declined?
Thanks in advance

Hello!  Glad you are here in America and glad to see you on these forums as well.

 

It sounds to me like you are trying to infer things about your scores and reports by applying for cards and seeing what you get in the denial letter.  To my mind that's the wrong strategy.  You should start with working on your three reports and getting them to look the way you want.  Specifically you are hoping that BOA will begin reporting a card that you opened 11 months ago.  Do not apply for anything else until that happens.  You may need to work with BOA to get their advice and help. 

 

Once you have a credit card on your report that has a "Date Opened" of at least 7 months ago, then you can begin thinking about applying for a second card.  But before you do that, make sure your existing card has a small psoitive balance reporting to all three bureaus.

Message 2 of 15
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: New Credit History

Thanks for your advice, don’t you know how long it will take for the credit history of the BofA card to be transferred to my FICO score?
Message 3 of 15
LionLaw
Frequent Contributor

Re: New Credit History

The message from Capital One is a good one; once they verify your information, you should be approved.

 

I'm afraid I can't give you much insight on how long it will take Bank of America to update the information they're reporting to the credit reporting agencies.

 

I would recommend requesting free copies of your credit reports some time in the next few weeks.  If the Bank of America account still isn't showing up, then talk to Bank of America to get it straightened out.

Message 4 of 15
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: New Credit History


@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks for your advice, don’t you know how long it will take for the credit history of the BofA card to be transferred to my FICO score?

What we can all say with fair confidence is that 7 days is a very short time to expect BOA to have updated the info on your three credit reports.  Most creditors do not do this any oftener than once a month.

 

The best solution is for you to sign up for a tool that lets you pull your credit reports for free.  The best choice in your case would be Credit Karma.  It is free, it gives you two of the three bureaus (TransUnion = TU and Equifax = EQ), and it will allow you to pull updated copies of your reports as often as once a week.  Although Karma is great for frequent reports, you can and should ignore its scores.

 

Pull your EQ and TU reports once a week and look for the BOA account.  Expect that it could easily take 7 weeks from the date when you updated it. 

 

If the account appears, look carefully at the Date Opened and the statement balance.  You are hoping to see a Date Opened of 11 months ago and a small positive statement balance.  You should be keeping your CC balance low while you are waiting for the account to appear.

 

If the account has not appeared by week 7, you should feel free to reach out to BOA and ask them for help. 

Message 5 of 15
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: New Credit History

Thank you all for your advices, I spoke with capital one client service and they told me they wanted a copy of my DL and my SSN, which I faxed them already, I also open a Credit Karma account and I have a score there with my BofA credit card, which is dated 11 months ago, but in “My FICO SCORE” in BofA App, says “score not available”, I guess I have to wait some weeks for my score to show up in there.
Message 6 of 15
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: New Credit History

Hey!  Congrats.  The really key question is: What do my reports say?  Scores are just reports turned into a 3-digit number.  Reports are the thing that matter.

 

In your case you have verified that the BOA card appears on a report, and that it is dated correctly (i.e. "Date Opened").  A few more questions:

 

*  Have you checked both the TransUnion and the Equifax reports to make sure they say the same thing?  Karma gives you access to both reports.

 

*  What is the balance reported on your BOA card?  (as it appears on the report)

 

*  What is the credit limit on that card?  (as it appears on the report)

 

It's not strange for the FICO score supplied by a credit card to take a couple months to begin appearing.  That doesn't mean that you don't have true FICO 8 scores -- only that the BOA interface isn't showing you its free TransUnion FICO 8 score yet.

 

It's easy to get all three scores for a buck.  Let us know if you are curious.  We can also suggest a free monthly source of Experian FICO 8 scores and reports.

Message 7 of 15
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: New Credit History

I too recently applied for a Cap1 MC with a very thin file (Oldest card is 10 months old) and I too got the same message as you. I had to fax in some ID (Canadian passport & ITIN).

They eventually approved it 2 days after receiving the fax, and are mailing the card as we speak.

It's a $300 limit on the steps program. (Small incremental increase of limit after 5 months of "responsible" usage). 

 

If you don't mind me asking, what's your immigration situation / how did you get your SSN? 

Message 8 of 15
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: New Credit History

Welcome to the USA, and also congratulations on your BOA CC and I am sure you would be approved for Capital One Plat. 

I had been in the same position of yours 5 months back. All I would suggest is not to apply for any more credit cards as of now because you will be taking hard pull hits onto your new reports. Wait till you have access to your reports and use tools to check which cards you can qualify.

 

Here is my CC  timeline as someone who moved to states recently, 

I started with Discover IT (secured) card with CL 200USD applied in Nov 2017 followed by that applied for Chase Freedom card after a month and was approved by CL 800USD. After that I made noob mistakes of applying for credit cards at AMEX and BOA reward cards with such thin credit file (obviously was rejected) Moving forward two months later decided to get secured cards from Capital One platinum and Citi and was approved with 200USD CL each and man, approvals for CC are addicting fortunately, I was approved for BOA Travel Rewards this time for 1000 USD CL.   

Message 9 of 15
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: New Credit History

I hate to leech onto this thread, but I'm in a similar situation too, and was wondering what my best course of action was.

 

When I started college in the States, the banker at Citi offered me the unsecured ThankYou Preferred when I opened my checking account. The application process was kind of sketchy ("...let's just say you have $60000 in income, and $5000 in assets...") but I wasn't about to complain, considering the fact that I was getting an unsecured card without an SSN or credit history.

 

Fast forward 10 months, and Citi started displaying my FICO score as of late March (717 out of 900, but I understand Citi's scores don't map perfectly to other conventional scores that are out of 850). Around the same time (but after the score started displaying), I secured on-campus employment and thus an SSN. I have just supplied the SSN to Citi today.

 

I received the card in the mail a few days ago, and I decided to plug my brand-new SSN online just out of curiosity. To my surprise, Amex showed me as prequalified for the Premier Rewards Gold card, so I just went ahead and applied for it using my new SSN, and was approved instantly. When I applied, I included the remittances I recieve as allowance and the merit scholarship from my college, but not the tuition payments that are wired to my college via my bank account. I therefore ended up reporting an income much less than the $60000 that the Citi banker fabricated reported. 

 

That's good and all, but my goal has long been to secure the MileagePlus Chase cards as I am currently an elite member with United. 

I understand that Chase requires an SSN on their application, which is why I've been unable to apply for it until now.

 

Now that I've been approved for a second credit card, I was wondering if my chances for approval for the MileagePlus Explorer/Club were favorable. Clearly I already have an established credit score/report(albeit a mediocre one), but as far as I know, my SSN is not yet reported to the credit agencies, so Amex presumably had another method of determining my creditworthiness.

 

Can banks (namely Chase) pull my credit report despite it not being linked to my SSN? If so, is there any benefit in waiting until the SSN is definitely linked with my credit report, or should I attempt an application now? How long would that process take?

 

None of the websites (Experian, CreditKarma, etc) is able to display my credit score right now, if that means anything (actually, CreditKarma is telling me to provide verifiable documents).

 

 

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

 

 

Message 10 of 15
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