What counts as a "bankcard"?

[Anonymous]

I don’t have any charge cards, so I can’t speak of experience with that.

However I can promise you that the TU alerts on MF maintain a separate tally for retail balances and report them just like the bankcard balances but separately.

I’m on mobile but if you really want me to I can try to post a screenshot later, but it’s the exact same just with the word retail instead of bankcard.

That’s awesome you got a retail account removed. Had it been that many years or did you have a trick up your sleeve @Trudy?

[Anonymous]

@Trudy If your retail accounts are coding as bankcards Trudy, then that’s a blessing be happy; because otherwise your credit based insurance score would be lower and you would pay higher insurance premiums.

I’d love to get rid of my retail cards but they’re my oldest cards. So it’s kind of bittersweet. Plus I get penalized even more because my AAOA is so far from that oldest card. (only on credit based insurance scores not FICO scores of course.)

But they may be coding correctly at EQ which is the other source of CBISs.

[Trudy]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I don’t have any charge cards, so I can’t speak of experience with that.

However I can promise you that the TU alerts on MF maintain a separate tally for retail balances and report them just like the bankcard balances but separately.

I’m on mobile but if you really want me to I can try to post a screenshot later, but it’s the exact same just with the word retail instead of bankcard.

That’s awesome you got a retail account removed. Had it been that many years or did you have a trick up your sleeve @Trudy?

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Nope.  Not questioning you, don't need any proof. I'm just showing the reason for my statements and how my store card reports balance changes here as bankcard.

The retail card removed was an old closed store card that finally dropped off.  On my report it also showed as a charge card.

[Anonymous]

I wish mine reported as bankcards.

[zerofire]

In the real world that is defined as a "bankcard" is different for different people. Here on MyFICO we generally call a bank card any card that does not have a retailer co-branding. So that Chase Amazon Prime Visa is a retail card while the Chase Freedom Visa and Chase Sapphire Reserve are bank cards.  Likewise things like the Synchrony Bank Amazon Store card would also count as a retail card. The fun part to this is when the bureau's start doing the determination. They have a habit of being a little questionable. Sometimes a retail card will be marked as a bank card only because it can run on the MasterCard or Visa network such as the Capital One Walmart MasterCard. Also sometimes lines of credit like the Sears Home Improvement account will also be considered a bank card even though it really is not one. Regardless the key thing to know is the cards that you have are working for you. It is normal to have one or two solid retail cards because you visit the retailers enough for them to matter to you.

[Anonymous]

To my understanding it’s a bankcard if it is a Visa MasterCard American Express or Discover, regardless of cobranding.

For instance my Macy’s card is retail where is my Macy’s American Express is a bankcard.

TU is the only bureau I’ve noticed that divides the balances on MF alerts. However, as you said, they are frequently mislabeled by the CRA’s.