Can you request credit card company to update credit report?

Through December 31, 2022, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax will offer all U.S. consumers free weekly credit reports through AnnualCreditReport.com to help you protect your financial health during the sudden and unprecedented hardship caused by COVID-19.

Dear Experian,

On your website, you state that you update credit card payments when my bank does. My credit report from your institution is three months behind. This is affecting my credit scores and causing me to be denied credit.

- IWR

Dear IWR,

Your creditors update the information on your credit report electronically. Therefore, when they send a monthly update to us, the information is updated on your credit report automatically. To ensure you have the most recent information, we recommend that you request a report directly from Experian.

How Can I Get My Credit Report?

If your application has been declined because of information in your Experian report, you can request a free copy at Experian's Report Access. Through December 31, 2022, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax will make available to all U.S. consumers free weekly credit reports through AnnualCreditReport.com to help you protect your financial health during the sudden and unprecedented hardship caused by COVID-19. You can also get a free Experian credit report at any time on our website, or download the Experian app for easy access wherever you are.

What Should I Do If the Information on My Credit Report Is Incorrect?

Most lenders update their account information with the credit bureaus once a month. Even if you pay your credit card balance off before you get your statement, the balance reported by the lender is typically what is listed on the billing statement at the end of the billing cycle. Depending on when you make the next purchase on your card, you may still see a balance reflected.

If you are seeing an account on your report that has not been updated in several months, you should dispute the account directly with Experian using the online Dispute Center. If you have documentation showing that the balance has changed, you can submit a copy online along with your dispute. Experian will contact your lender and ask them to verify the information they have reported.

You may also wish to contact your lender to verify that they have been reporting your account information to the credit reporting companies and request that they send updated balance information. For more information, see How to Dispute Credit Report Information.

How Do Credit Card Balances Affect Me?

High credit card balances can negatively impact credit scores because lenders view them as a sign of risk.

Your utilization rate, which is calculated by taking the total of all your credit card balances and dividing that number by the total of all your credit card limits, is the second most important factor in your FICO® Scores☉ . Most credit experts recommend keeping your utilization rate, or balance-to-limit ratio, below 30%. Individuals with the best scores tend to have utilization rates below 10%.

What Can I Do to Improve My Credit Score?

Paying down or paying off your credit card balances is a great first step to begin improving your credit scores. Here are some other steps you can take to begin improving your scores right away:

• Pay off any past due debts. If you have any past-due debts, such as collection accounts, paying them off can improve scores right away. Newer credit score models may exclude paid collection accounts from the score calculation altogether.
• Make sure all payments are on time. Your payment history is the most important factor in your scores, and late payments remain on your report for seven years. Even one missed payment can damage scores.
• Order your free credit score from Experian. If you want to see all the top risk factors that are impacting you currently, you can request your free credit score directly from Experian. When you get your score, it will have a list of the factors that are currently affecting you the most. Improving on those items will help you improve all of your scores.
• Sign up for Experian Boost®ø. Experian Boost is a free feature that allows you to get credit for making your utility, cellphone and streaming service payments on time. Once the payments are added, you'll see an updated credit score instantly so you can see if your score has increased and by how much.

Thanks for asking.

Jennifer White, Consumer Education Specialist

Reading time: 3 minutes

Question: How often do credit card companies report to the nationwide credit bureaus?

Answer:

As with many areas of personal finance, the answer to this question depends heavily on the credit card you use and your unique financial situation — reporting times vary from card to card.

If a creditor decides to report to one of the nationwide credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion), there are guidelines that they must follow. They should report monthly, preferably on the billing cycle date. For credit card companies, this is usually the day that they issue your charges for the most recent billing cycle, also known as your statement date. For most companies, these dates are spread throughout the month so that they don't have to produce every customer's statement on the same day.

For example, if a credit card company has 25 billing cycles, they could send 25 files to the nationwide credit bureaus each month. Smaller companies may only send one file a month that contains all accounts in their portfolio but only includes data as of the statement date. Some credit card companies will report your information in the middle of the month, while others do their reporting at the end of the month. Ultimately, however, there's no set day, time and frequency credit card companies have to report, as long as they meet the general guidelines.

Creditors are not legally obliged to report at all. It's a voluntary practice, so it's up to them to decide when and how often they do it. This also means that some companies report to all three nationwide credit bureaus, while others only report to one or two, and others may not report at all.

Additionally, credit card companies will typically not report when you are a day or two late on your payment. However, it can be beneficial to your credit scores to have a lower balance when your payments are reported. Consider setting up automatic online payments so that whenever your creditors choose to report, your balances are as low as they can be.

Credit card companies don't always disclose the specifics of their reporting policies, making it difficult to know precisely when a payment will be factored into your credit scores. You can call your credit card company to ask when they report, or you might consider signing up for a credit-monitoring service that will notify you as soon as your creditors report your balances.

The three nationwide credit bureaus generally update your account as soon as they receive new information, meaning your credit scores can change often and suddenly. However, in general, you shouldn't panic if you make a payment and your credit scores don't immediately change.

At the end of the billing cycle, when many credit companies report, there can be a big fluctuation in your credit scores all at once. If your scores are still unchanged after about a month, check with your creditors to confirm that they've reported your status to one or more of the nationwide credit bureaus. If you anticipate buying a home or making another large purchase in the near future, it's a good idea to begin paying down your balances a few months before you plan on applying for a loan or line of credit to ensure that your credit scores will reflect a good payment history.

For a free monthly Equifax credit report and a free monthly VantageScore® 3.0 credit score, create a myEquifax account and click "Get my free credit score" on your myEquifax dashboard to enroll in Equifax Core Credit™. A VantageScore is one of many types of credit scores.

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