Credit card from overseas

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I am asking this question for a friend of mine who doesn’t have an account here.

She recently moved to the United States and want to apply for SSN to start her journey here. She has one problem. She was in debt back in her native country and has a bad credit score there. She owes to the bank.

Will she have a hard time in the US? Will her overseas bad debt carry in with her anywhere she goes? As far as I read online that US doesn’t care about other country credit cards?

[Anonymous]

US credit history is unrelated with another country's credit history, credit reports and scoring models here do not factor non-US accounts and debts. But if she can't manage the debt she has back in her home country, then her ability to manage spending and debts in the US may also be questionable.

It's more of an issue with managing personal finance here than what's on her credit report. Although the US credit scoring doesn't count her debts and derogatories in another country, she is still responsible to pay the debt back there and needs to know how to pay down debts.

[Anonymous]

Ok thanks for the information. She is managing her debt back in her country but she has had times where she missed her due dates and stuff.

She just wants to make sure it doesnt carry with her to US. I was under the impression that VISA credit card goes around everywhere with you but thanks for clarifying that.

[SBR249]

There are some exceptions to the credit reports don't carry rule. 

In general, they don't as in lenders in the US cannot look at credit profiles in other countries (often this is related to data privacy laws).

However, there are multi-national companies that have the ability to look at your history with them in another country. For example, AmEx offers their global transfer service where they will open new cards in a country that you just moved to by looking at your relationship with them in your former country. HSBC and Barclays will do the same for their high-value customers (and any customer willing to pay for the service). While all these are services that customers have to explicitly request, it shows that the ability to look at internal files from another country exists with multinational lenders and may be more widespread than advertised even if there are no services offered to customers based on it. 

tl;dr it may also depend on what company she owes the debt to, what kind of presence they may have here in the US, and what kind of relationship she has with them. 

[RobertEG]

Many countires have specific laws that bar the disclosure by creditors of consumer information to parties outside their country, so it is often more than just a credit reporting decision on part of a foreign party.......