The CARD Act includes revisions that place limitations on credit cards granted to consumers under the age of 21.
It requires either that the person under the age of 21 have a co-signer who is at least 21 years of age, or that the person show their independent ability to pay, such as reliable income.
In your prior apps, did you provide either showing?
As for the benefit of being an AU, the answer is that it depends.
An AU is not a free ride that enables one to benefit from the credit history of another.
By definition, adding an AU to your credit file is the addition of the credit history of the account of another.
Yes, it can benefit raw score.
However, if a prospecitive creditor includes a manual review of the consumer's credit report as part of their approval process and they see the presence of an AU account, they know that the resulting score is no longer representative of only the consumer's own credit risk.
They could choose to disregard or give less consideration to the score that iis based in part on history of another.
AU accounts are more beneficial when the consumer is applying for credit that is relatively low (e.g., building or rebuilding), where the prospective creditor is not likely to do a manual review, and thus will not be aware that the score they are using is based on the history of another. AUs are thus helpful when building or rebuilding, but can cause problems when you move up the credit ladder.
Be aware that recent policy changes by the CRAs in response to a settlement agreement with the AGs of several states now requires the reporting of the date of birth of the consumer before they will report any AU account to their files. If a minor, that might affect the reporting process.
