Good Morning Green Panda. During our Credit Card Management Series we have discussed several different aspects of Credit Cards such as The Myths About The Amex Black Card, Good Credit Cards for College Students, and Paying 0% Interest on Your Credit Cards. We have learned about Prepaid Credit Cards, The Best Solutions to Credit Card Debt, and if Credit Cards are Good or Bad. We have also reviewed the Citi Thank You Preferred Card, and the TD Bank Payment Plus Card. However, none of this information matters if our credit card is not approved.
How to Get Your Credit Card Approved
Today we are going to discuss how to get your credit card approved when applying for your first credit card. If we have never had a credit card, our financial institution will still perform a credit check to get our credit card approved. Any other bills that we pay on a monthly basis such as our cell phone bill, our cable bill, or our monthly hydro bill are regularly reported to the credit bureau. It is very important that we pay all of our monthly bills on time, because this will determine if our credit card is approved.
If we have never been granted credit in the form of a credit card, a student loan, or a cell phone we may be required to make a deposit to have our credit card approved or to sign up for a prepaid credit card. This is also true for a new cell phone contract, or if we are registering with a cable company for the first time for cable or internet services. Our deposit is for security purposes in case we don’t have the money to pay our bill. Our security deposit is returned to us once our account is closed or our contract is terminated.
Pre Approved Credit Cards
If we have established a good credit history we may receive offers in the mail for Pre Approved Credit Cards. A credit card Pre Approval simply means that we have met some preliminary criteria as established by our financial institution. Pre approval criteria can include our age, our annual income, and the current amount of deposits that we currently hold with that financial institution.
A Credit Card Pre Approval is not based on our credit history and therefore a Pre Approval is not a guarantee that our Credit Card will be approved. If you have ever received a Credit Card Pre Approval offer letter in the mail I suggest that you read the fine print. If you do, you will notice that it states something similar to “this offer is conditional based upon on a successful credit check verification.”
If we sign the Pre Approval offer and return it to our financial institution they will perform a credit check. When we sign the Pre Approval offer we are actually giving our consent for our financial institution to run a credit check.
Once our Credit Card is approved, we will have to sign again to accept the terms and conditions of our Credit Card.
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Tahnya is 30 years old and lives in Montreal Quebec. She graduated in 2005 from Concordia University, and she currently works for a major International Financial Institution. She recently launched http://www.mediamadam.ca/. You can follow her on Twitter @TahnyaP.