Can creditors see your spend on other cards?

[Anonymous]

I think they can see payment amounts, right?

Obviously if they see reported balances on your other accounts they can make determinations based off of those, but I think they can also see payment amounts.  So, even if your reported balance is say a 2-digit amount every cycle for a certain lender, if they see you paying a 4-digit amount every cycle they can infer that your spend is in the thousands.  Does that sound correct?

I'm talking strictly about what one of your creditors can see from a credit report pull regarding your other creditors.  Naturally there are exceptions, like my banking is through Chase so they can see exactly what I pay monthly to all of my other creditors since I use my Chase checking account to pay all of them.

[UpperNwGuy]

Interesting question.  I have always wondered what the banks see when they pull my credit reports.  I suspect it is not the same thing that I see when I get my free copy.

[MrDisco99]

I'm pretty sure they just see closing balances, not actual purchases from other issuers.

[Anonymous]

Yea they only see what your balance is after your statement closes

[K-in-Boston]

On full reports that we as consumers can see, last payment due and last payment amount both show. Not sure if this visible to creditors, but it’s rumored to factor into newer credit scoring models.

[Anonymous]

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@MrDisco99I'm pretty sure they just see closing balances, not actual purchases from other issuers.

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They see closing balances of course and not purchases, but if they can see payments, then can make inferences.  I'm pretty sure they can see payment amounts.  I think it's on my TU report where I can see all of my monthly payment amounts, not sure about the other 2B.

Closing balances may be small, say $100, but if someone is running their balance up to say $4000 and then paying it down to $100 or whatever reports, if a creditor can see that a $4k payment was made, they can then make inferences about purchases.

[Gmood1]

Depending on what the creditors report, will determine what they can see and how soon you pay it. If I pay before the statement date. Sometimes those payments aren't reported. If I let the statement close and then pay. I'm almost guaranteed it will report what I paid.

[Anonymous]

Interesting stuff.

I bank with Chase, so I know they see just about everything.  I always wonder what they think when they see me making a $9000 CC payment to Citi from my Chase checking account during times where my Chase CCs only see a small swipe or two during a cycle.

[Anonymous]

The folks who are saying that a creditor can only see the monthly reported balance are well intentioned, but not quite right.  They would have indeed been right for most of the history of the three bureaus.  But as BBS and some others are aware, the bureaus began collecting what are called trended data a few years ago.  (I am unsure the exact date, and different bureaus started at different times.  But by 2013 all three were collecting it.)

TD include (among many other things) the date and amount of every payment that you made for the preceding 24 months.  Not all CC issuers are submitting payment data, but quite a few do.

So the answer is: if a given CC issuer has been submitting these data, then all of the other creditors can see it. 

That's true in principle, but they would need to purchase (or develop in house) specialized data analysis tools to meaningfully use those data in their decisions.  I.e. a manual reviewer can see the payment history if one has been given, but what a CC issuer wants is a computerized tool.  E.g. if it sees that you are a high spender with a competitor, maybe it targets you aggressively for one of its cards.

[Gmood1]

Most banking institution I've dealt with don't mix the bank account and loan departments. So the loan side doesn't see, nor do they factor in what you have in their savings or checking accounts when it comes to extending credit. Maybe Chase is different?
I've seen some of that trended data y'all mention. But again, not all of the creditors do this. I wouldn't count on it, If you pay before the statement closes.
Also if you allow statements to cut before paying. You'll see a total amount owed for that month. If you pay before statements cut, that amount will be less than what you actually owed for that given month.

Those of us that have more than three different creditors, can easily see what's going on and what's being reported.