Capital One Secured MasterCard Question.

Anonymous · ‎11-23-2015

Heyy guys,

I just received my Capital One Secured MasterCard in the mail today. I activated it and all that good stuff. My questions are this, when would be a good idea to try for an unsecured card with them?

My credit scores currently are around the 570-590 area. Just wanting to get my credit up and established for a, hopefully soon, car loan.

Anonymous · ‎11-24-2015

Not for a while. You need to get your scores as high in the 600's as you can in my opinion and you will with proper use of the secured card. When your scores start going up significantly, check their pre-qual site for offers. It's all about building and that takes time, you'll get there though.

Anonymous · ‎11-25-2015

Wait until it shows up as a new account. Then apply for the Platinum card. No sense in waiting for high 600 scores - that will needlessly delay your score growth. You should get 3 account established as soon as possible for best score growth. Use the cards and pay two in full before the statement closes, the third one you want let report a small balance.

Anonymous · ‎11-25-2015

CapitalOne does a HP on all 3 bureaus, and there's not much benefit to getting the Plat card. So if I were you, I wouldn't get the Plat card.

One approach could be: get another secured card that has a path to graduate (e.g. BOA secured card) and have 3 cards only. Watch the score go up in a few months, and apply for something like Chase Freedom.

Cotton_Britches · ‎11-25-2015

My scores are similar to yours. Earlier this month I was approved for the Capital One Secured, Capital One Platinum, Victoria's Secret and Express - all within ten minutes. Cap One used the same pulls for both cards.

Three of the cards are already reporting to Experian. Just got an alert that my FICO score went up 25 points.

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

Anonymous · ‎11-25-2015

I hope I am not contradicting any one here, as most people have more experience than me. I too recently applied for and was approved for the Cap1 secured card, my scores between the 3 CRAs was between 495 and 570. My first statement I paid in full, and would periodically check the prequal site thinking I wouldn't be prequal for anything. Then one day I was prequal for the Cap1 Platinum and the QS1. I applied for both on the sameday right away, and was approved for both with a limit of 500 on both. I was suprised, bc 1 my scores are bad and I have a lot of baddies on transunion +5, and I had read here that it isn't possible to have more than 2 cap1 subprime cards. I suppose Cap1 has no ryhme or reason??