Are credit cards not viewed as credit until you miss one payment?
K, welcome to Money.SE.  You knew enough to add good tags to the question. Now, you should search on the dozens of questions with those tags to understand (in less than an hour) far more than that banker knows about credit and credit scores.  My advice is first, never miss a payment. Ever. The advice your father passed on to you is nonsense, plain and simple. I'm just a few chapters shy of being able to write a book about the incorrect advice I'd heard bank people give their customers. The second bit of advice is that you don't need to pay interest to have credit cards show good payment history. i.e. if you choose to use credit cards, use them for the convenience, cash/rebates, tracking, and guarantees they can offer. Pay in full each bill.  Last - use a free service, first, AnnualCreditReport.com to get a copy of your credit report, and then a service like Credit Karma for a simulated FICO score and advice on how to improve it. As member @Agop has commented, Discover (not just for cardholders) offers a look at your actual score, as do a number of other credit cards for members.  (By the way, I wouldn't be inclined to discuss this with dad. Most people take offense that you'd believe strangers more than them. Most of the answers here are well documented with links to IRS, etc, and if not, quickly peer-reviewed. When I make a mistake, a top-rated member will correct me within a day, if not just minutes) "First, a note of my personal experience: up until a year ago, my credit lines were composed exclusively of credit cards with perfect payment histories, and my credit score is fine. If you mean that credit cards have no impact on a person's credit score until they miss a payment, that is certainly not correct. FICO's website identifies ""payment history"" as 35% of your FICO score: The first thing any lender wants to know is whether you’ve paid past credit accounts on time. This is one of the most important factors in a FICO® Score. ... Credit payment history on many types of accounts Account types considered for payment history include: ... Details on late or missed payments (""delinquencies"") and public record and collection items FICO® Scores consider: How many accounts show no late payment A good track record on most of your credit accounts will increase your FICO® Scores. Clearly, from the last item alone, we see that credit lines (a category which includes credit cards) with no late payments is a factor in computing your FICO score, and certainly other credit bureaus behave similarly. Possibly the banker was trying to explain some other point, like ""If you're careful not to spend more on your card than you have in the bank, you can functionally treat your credit card as a debit line,"" but did so in a confusing way." "Not sure what you mean by ""missing"". Credit card debt can be paid back in full when you get the bill, or you can ""take a loan"" and ""pay in installments"". If you do the latter, and pay back at least the minimum required amount on time, you are not ""missing"" your payment. Technically, you are taking a small, but expensive loan, and if you pay that loan back according to the terms and conditions that apply to your credit card, this is reported to the credit bureau and improves your credit. If you are really ""missing your payment"", paying late (more than a few days), less than minimum or nothing at all, this won't help to improve your credit. A ""first-time offender"" won't always be reported to the credit bureau, but if he is, it won't be a positive report." "I can't think of any conceivable circumstance in which the banker's advice would be true. (edit: Actually, yes I can, but things haven't worked that way since 1899 so his information is a little stale. Credit bureaus got their start by only reporting information about bad debtors.) The bureaus only store on your file what gets reported to them by the institution who extended you the credit. This reporting tends to happen at 30, 60 or 90-day intervals, depending on the contract the bureau has with that institution. All credit accounts are ""real"" from the day you open them. I suspect the banker might be under the misguided impression the account doesn't show up on your report (become ""real"") until you miss a payment, which forces the institution to report it, but this is incorrect-- the institution won't report it until the 30-day mark at the earliest, whether or not you miss a payment or pay it in full. The cynic in me suspects this banker might give customers such advice to sabotage their credit so he can sell them higher-interest loans. UDAAP laws were created for a reason." Of course credit cards are viewed as credit. If you're using money on a credit card, you are not directly paying for your transactions on goods/services immediately: this is the act of borrowing credit to pay for them. Debit cards, on the other hand, work where the funds are taken from an account immediately (or subject to a small delay - but usually no more than 24 hours - depending on various factors). You should never miss credit card payments, as that will affect your credit rating. If you have unpaid money on your card this is debt - plain and simple. But to answer your question succinctly - yes, credit cards are a form of credit, as the name suggests. When you apply for a mortgage any unpaid credit (debt) is considered and would adversely affect you if you have such debts. The level to which it affects you depends on the amount of debt. This is how it works in the UK, but to my knowledge it is the same in the US and most other countries. Please clarify if you think this is incorrect. "There's a difference between missing a payment and ""carrying a balance"" (making an on-time payments that are less than the full balance due). I have heard mortgage brokers claim that, if you have no other credit history, carrying a small balance here and there on a credit card may improve your score.  (""Small"" is in relation to your available credit and your ability to pay it off.)  But actually missing a payment will probably hurt your score. Example: You have a card with a credit limit of $1000.  In July you charge $300 worth of stuff.  You get the next statement and it shows the balance due of $300 and a minimum payment of $100. If you pay the entire $300 balance in that cycle, most cards won't charge you any interest.  You are not carrying a balance, so the credit scores may not reflect that you actually took a $300 loan and paid it off. If you instead pay $200, you'll be in good standing (because $200 is greater than the minimum payment).  But you'll be carrying a $100 balance into the next statement cycle.  Plus interest will accrue on that $100.  If you do this regularly, your credit score will probably take into account that you've taken a small loan and made the payments.  For those with no other credit history, this may be an appropriate way to increase your credit score.  (But you're paying interest, so it's not free.)  And if the average balance you carry is considered high relative to your ability to pay or to the total credit available to you, then this could adversely affect your score (or, at least, the amount of credit another provider is willing to extend to you). If you instead actually miss a payment, or make a payment that's less than the minimum payment, that will almost certainly hurt your credit score.  It will also incur penalties as well as interest.  You want to avoid that whenever possible. My guess is that, in the game of telephone from the banker to you, the ""carrying a balance"" was misinterpreted as ""missing a payment.""" "This does not directly address the question, but how the Bank views your behaviour is not the same as a credit reporting bureau.  If you do not ""go deep"" on your card at all, you may be deemed not to be exercising the facility, indeed they may ask you to reduce your credit limit. This is not the same as ""missing a payment"". At the same time, do not just make the minimum payment. Ideally you should clear it within 3 months. Think of it as a very short term line of credit. Not clearing the balance within three months (or turning it over) demonstrates a cash flow problem, as does clearing it from another card. Some banks call this ""kite flying"" after similar behaviour in older days with cheque accounts. If you use the credit and show you can pay it off, you should never need to ask for a credit increase, it will be offered. The Bureau will be informed of these offers. Also, depending upon how much the bank trusts you, the Bureau may see a ""monthly"" periodic credit review, which is good if you have no delinquencies. Amex does this as a rule."
"The following is based on my Experian credit scoring feedback and experience here in the UK over many years.  (And for further information I currently hold a credit score of 999, the highest possible, with 6 credit cards.)  Now I'm assuming that while there may be some differences in particulars in your case due to the difference in locality nevertheless the below should hopefully provide some broad guidelines and reasonable conclusion in your situation: Having a large number of active credit accounts may be seen as a negative.  However having a large number of settled accounts should on the contrary have a positive effect on your score.  As you keep your accounts mostly settled, I think having another card will not be to your detriment and should in time be beneficial. A large total credit balance outstanding may count against you.  (But see the next point.)   Having your total outstanding debt on all credit accounts be a smaller proportion of your total available credit, counts in your favour.  This means having more cards for the same amount of credit in use, is net-net in your favour.  It also has the effect of making even larger outstanding credit balances (as in point 2) to be a lower percentage of your total available credit, and consequently will indicate lower risk to lenders.   It appears from my experience the higher the highest credit limit on a single card you are issued (and are managing responsibly e.g. either paid off or used responsibly) the better. Needless to say, any late payments count against you.  The best thing to do then is to set up a direct debit for the minimum amount to be paid like clockwork every month.  Lenders really like consistent payers. :) New credit accounts initially will count against you for a while.  But as the accounts age and are managed responsibly or settled they will eventually count in your favour and increase your score. Making many credit applications in a short space of time may count against you as you may be seen to be credit reliant.  Conclusion: On balance I would say get the other card.  Your credit score might be slightly lower for a couple of months but eventually it will be to your benefit as per the above.    Having another card also means more flexibility and more more options if you do end up with a credit balance that you want to finance and pay off over a period as cheaply as possible.   In the UK the credit card companies are falling over themselves trying to offer one ""interest free"" or 0% ""balance transfer"" offers.  Of course they're not truly 0% since you typically have to pay a ""transfer fee"" of a couple of percent. Still, this can be quite cheap credit, much much cheaper than the headline APR rates actually associated with the cards.  The catch is that any additional spending on such cards are paid off first (and attract interest at the normal rate until paid off).  Usually also if you miss a payment the interest rate reverts to the normal rate.  But these pitfalls are easily avoided (pay by direct debit and don't use card you've got a special deal on for day to day expenses.) So, having more cards available is then very useful because you then have choice.  You can roll expensive debts to the cheapest lender at your disposal for as long as they'll offer, and then simply not use that card for any purchases (while paying off the balance as cheaply as possible), meanwhile using another card for day to day expenses." "In this answer, I won't elaborate on the possibilities of fraud (or pure human error), because something can always go wrong. I will, however, explain why I think you should always keep receipts. When the (monthly or so) time comes to pay your credit card bill, your credit card company sends you a list of transactions. That list has two primary purposes, both of which I would consider equally important: While for the former item, a receipt is not necessary (though it certainly does not hurt showing the receipt along with the bill to provide further proof that the payment was indeed connected to that bill), the latter point does require you to store the receipts so you can check, item-by-item, whether each of the sums is correct (and matched with a receipt at all). So, unless you can actually memorize all the credit card transactions you did throughout the past one or two months, the receipts are the most convenient way of keeping that information until the bill arrives. Yes, your credit card company probably has some safeguards in place to reveal fraud, which might kick in in time (the criteria are mostly heuristical, it seems, with credit cards or legitimate transactions here getting blocked every now and then simply because some travelling of the actual owner was misinterpreted as theft). However, it is your money, it is your responsibility to discover any issues with the bill, just as you would check the monthly transaction list from your bank account line by line. Ultimately, that is why you sign the vendor copy of the receipt when buying something offline; if you discover an issue in your list of transactions, you have to notify your credit card company that you dispute one of the charges, and then the charging vendor has to show that they have your signature for the respective transaction. So, to summarize: Do keep your receipts, use them to check the list of transactions before paying your credit card bill. EDIT: The receipt often cannot be replaced with the bill from the vendor. The bill is useful for seeing how the sum charged by the respective vendor was created, but in turn, such bills often do not contain any payment information, or (when payment was concluded before the bill was printed, as sometimes happens in pre-paid scenarios such as hotel booking) nondescript remarks such as ""- PAYMENT RECEIVED -"", without any further indication of which one of your credit cards, debit cards, bank accounts, stored value cards, or cash was used." "In the US, if your monthly statement was issued by the credit card company on January 1 and it showed a balance of $1000, then a payment must be made towards that balance by January 25 or so, not February 1 as you say, to keep the card in good standing. The minimum payment required to keep the card in good standing is specified in your monthly statement, and failure to meet this requirement can trigger various consequences such as an increase in the interest rate charged by the credit card company. With regard to interest charges, whether your purchase of $2000 on  January 3 is charged interest or not depends entirely on what happened the previous two months.  If you had paid both your monthly statements dated November 1 and December 1 of the previous year in full by the their respective due dates of November 25 and December 25, and the $1000 balance on the January 1 statement is entirely due to purchases (no cash advances) made in December, then you will not be charged interest on your January purchase of $2000 as long as you pay it off in full by February 25 (the charge will appear on your February 1 statement). But, if you had not paid your December 1 statement in full by December 25, then that $1000 billed to you on January 1 will include  purchases made during December finance charges on the unpaid balance from the previous month  plus finance charges on the purchases made during December. The finance charges will continue to accumulate during January until such time as you pay off the bill in full (these charges will appear on your February 1 statement), hopefully by the due date of January 25. But even if you pay off that $1000 in full on January 25, your charge of $2000 on January 3 will start to accumulate finance charges as of the day it hits the account and these finance charges will appear on your February 1 statement.  If you paid off that $1000 on January 10, say, then maybe there will be no further finance charges on the $2000 purchase on January 3 after January 10 but now we are getting into the real fine print of what your credit card agreement says. Ditto for the case when you pay off that $1000 on January 2 and made the $2000 charge on January 3. You most likely will not be charged interest on that $2000 charge but again it depends on the fine print. For example, it might say that you will be charged interest on the average of the daily balances for January, but will not be charged interest on purchases during the February cycle (unless you miss the February 25 payment and the whole cycle starts all over again). As a general rule, it takes two monthly cycles of payment in full by the due date before one gets into the state of no finance charges for new purchases and effectively an ""interest-free"" loan of $2000 from January 3 (date of purchase) till February 25 (due date of payment).  Matters become more complicated when cash advances are taken from a credit card which are charged interest from the day they are taken but don't trigger finance charges on new purchases or the so-called ""zero percent balance transfer offers"" are accepted." "As documented in MyFICO (http://www.myfico.com/credit-education/whats-in-your-credit-score/), there are several factors that affect credit scores. Payment history (35%) The first thing any lender wants to know is whether you've paid past   credit accounts on time. This is one of the most important factors in   a FICO® Score. As @Ben Miller mentioned, checking your credit report to determine whether or not late payments were reported to credit bureaus will give you a sense of whether or not this was effected. You mentioned several bounced payments, which certainly could have caused this. This would be my largest concern with a closed account, is to investigate why and what was reported to the bureaus, and in turn, other lenders. Also, since this has the highest impact on credit scores (35%), it's arguably, the most important. This is further detailed here, which details the public record and late payment effect on your score. Amounts owed (30%) Having credit accounts and owing money on them does not necessarily   mean you are a high-risk borrower with a low FICO® Score....However,   when a high percentage of a person's available credit is been used,   this can indicate that a person is overextended, and is more likely to   make late or missed payments. Given that this card was closed, whatever your credit limit was is now no longer added into your total credit limit. However, your utilization on that card is gone (assuming it gets paid off), depending on any other credit lines, and since you reported ""heavy use"" that could be a positive impact, though likely not. Length of credit history (15%) In general, a longer credit history will increase your FICO® Scores.   However, even people who haven't been using credit long may have high   FICO Scores, depending on how the rest of the credit report looks. Depending how old your card was, and particularly since this was your only credit card, it will likely impact your average age of credit lines, depending on other lines of credit (loans etc) you have open. This accounts for about 15% of your score, so not as large of an impact as the first two.  Credit mix in use (10%) FICO Scores will consider your mix of credit cards, retail accounts,   installment loans, finance company accounts and mortgage loans. Given that this was your only credit card, your loan mix has been reduced (possibly to none). New credit (10%) Research shows that opening several credit accounts in a short period   of time represents a greater risk - especially for people who don't   have a long credit history. This focuses on credit inquiries, which as you mentioned, you will likely have another either re-opening this credit card or opening another at some point in the future.  Regardless, paying off the rest of that card is a priority, as interest rates on average credit cards are over 13%, and often higher (source). This rate comes into play when not paying the balance in full every month, and also as @Ben Miller suggested, I would not utilize a credit card without being able to pay it in full. It can often be a dangerous cycle of debt." "Its called a ""Grace Period"" and you are not paying interest on the 0% BT, you are paying interest on the amount you spent in purchases If you do not pay your balance in full by the due date your grace period ends. This means that you have to pay interest on the purchased amount from the day it is made. This is why when you do a balance transfer the card should be put in the Sock Drawer until the BT is paid off. In order to restore the grace period you must pay the balance in full and the grace period will start during the Next Payment Cycle. Lets Assume: Statement cuts on the 1st and Due date is the 20th. you make the minimum payment of $10 Balance now is $100 Since you have a balance of $100 from the previous statement and a new purchase of $50.00, when the next statement cuts you will have to pay interest according to the terms on the $50.00 portion. In order to get the grace period back you will have to pay in full and wait for the next cycle In case I did not explain it well here is a quote from creditcards dot com website: The cost of carrying a balance   This is because carrying a balance of   any size into the next billing cycle means there is no grace period on   your purchases during that cycle. The card company will begin charging   interest on your purchases the day you make them. So leaving even $1   in unpaid balance on your card will cost you considerably more than   the measly finance charges on that dollar. To see how this works let's consider an imaginary card user named   Sally. She's so happy she got a new credit card that she charges   $1,500 in purchases on the first day of her monthly billing cycle.   After the cycle ends, Sally pays off the entire $1,500 by the due   date, wiping her balance to zero. As a result, her purchases during   the second month are also free of interest. She has used her grace   period wisely to avoid finance charges. What happens if Sally leaves just $1 of her balance from the first   month unpaid? That $1 begins to accrue interest starting the first day   of the billing cycle. It's just $1, so the interest is not a big deal   -- but because she used up her grace period without paying off her entire debt, her new purchases during the second month also start to   get hit with interest charges immediately, starting the day of the   transaction. Assuming she makes another $1,500 in purchases at the   average annual interest rate of about 13 percent, that means $16 in   finance charges for the month. If Sally repeats this pattern, the   interest costs add up to $190 over the course of a year." "FICO SCORING http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/art/chart_fico.gif This is from the PBS Frontline show ""Secret History of the Credit Card."" Getting rid of one card won't immediately trash your score, nor will it be by the full impact (15%) of credit history. If there's no fee, I'd buy gas once per quarter with it. If there is a fee, I'd check my FICO score and if I can afford to lose 20 or so points for a time, I'd go for it." This is a question with a flawed premise.  Credit cards do have two-factor authentication on transactions they consider more at risk to be fraudulent.  I've had several times when I bought something relatively expensive and unusual for me, where the CC either initially declined and sent me a text asking to confirm immediately (after which they would approve the charges), or approved but sent me a text right away asking to confirm (after which they'd automatically dispute if I told them to).  The first is legitimately what you are asking for; the second is presumably for less risky but still some risk transactions). Ultimately, the reason they don't allow it for every transaction is that not enough people would make use of it to be worth their time to implement it.  Particularly given it slows down the transaction significantly (and look at the complaints at the ~10-15 seconds extra EMV authentication takes, imagine that as a minute or more), I think you'd get a single digit percentage of people using that service. This is probably a good time to note that credit is not a liquid asset, and not an emergency fund. Credit can be revoked or denied at any time, and Murphy's law states that you may have issues with credit when everything else goes wrong too.