You Ask, Equifax Answers: How Often Do Credit Card Companies Report to the Credit Bureaus?

Highlights:

• If a credit card company reports to the three Nationwide Credit Reporting Agencies (NCRAs), there's no set day, time nor frequency.
• It can be beneficial to your credit scores to have a lower balance when your payments are reported.
• Credit card companies don't always disclose the specifics of their reporting policies.

Question: How often do credit card companies report to the Nationwide Credit Reporting Agencies?

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 Reporting Agencies (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 Reporting Agencies 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 Reporting Agencies, 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 Reporting Agencies 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 Reporting Agencies. 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.