Buy Credit Tradelines, Starting at $15 | Digital Honey (2024)

Buying and selling tradelines is not technically illegal, but it can be considered fraud because it violates most credit card companies’ terms of service.

It is perfectly legal to add your spouse, family member, or even close friend as an authorized user on your credit card account, but the minute money begins to exchange hands, this is what is considered fraud.

There are even rumors of upcoming legislation to ban the practice of buying and selling authorized user tradelines.

Buying tradelines, or rather, opening tradelines, is legal when it comes to primary accounts.

We say ‘buy’ here because many credit building types of accounts, like credit builder loans or secured credit cards, require you to put up a security deposit, pay a subscription/admin fee, or pay an annual fee.

So, instead of buying tradelines from a broker or individual, you are, in a sense, buying tradelines from a lender or creditor.

This will largely depend on your current credit report and score and what kind of tradeline you are adding. But, generally speaking, you can see an increase ranging from 20 points to 100 points or more.

If, for example, you are starting with zero credit and adding a rental history tradeline with two years of payment history, this will likely boost your score significantly when using a FICO 9 scoring model or newer.

Whereas using a service like Experian BOOST^™ when you already have several years’ worth of credit history might only raise your score a few points, if any.

And in some cases, opening a new tradeline may actually decrease your score, though this will only be temporary. As you maintain on-time payments and keep your account in good standing, then your credit score will begin to increase once more.

An authorized user tradeline, on the other hand, may end up having no impact on your credit score at all. This method of achieving a good credit score is best for those with no credit history. Those with bad credit won’t benefit as much from being added as an authorized user.

Again, this depends on what kind of tradeline you are adding.

Authorized user tradelines range in prices based on the age of account and credit limit. Younger accounts will cost in the neighborhood of $200, while seasoned tradelines will cost you in excess of $1000.

Alternatively, adding utility tradelines can be done for free using Experian BOOST^™. Or you can pay a 3rd party company a small fee, usually between $2 – $10 a month, to add a rental tradeline to your credit reports.

Opening a new revolving tradeline can range in cost from free to several hundred dollars if you are required to put up a security deposit.

Or you can open an alternative type of account that works like a debit card and reports like a credit card, like Extra, which charges an annual fee for credit reporting.

A primary tradeline is an account where you are the primary account holder.

For instance, if you open a credit card in your name, this is considered a primary tradeline when it reports to the credit bureaus.

If you were to then add your spouse as an authorized user to this credit card account, it would be viewed as an authorized user account on your spouse’s credit reports.

It is important to note that joint accounts and cosigned accounts are also considered primary tradelines on your credit reports.

Primary tradelines can consist of credit cards, student loans, auto loans, rental history, utility payments, a mortgage, and more.

Basically, any type of account that is reported to the credit bureaus, where you are considered the primary account holder, is a primary tradeline.

Buying tradelines is not the best way to build business credit. This is because business credit scores work much differently than personal credit scores.

Duns & Bradstreet is a credit reporting agency unique to business credit. And the score ranges and calculations used for business credit scores vary widely between them and the other business credit reporting agencies.

There are some similarities in calculating credit scores between scoring models. For instance, keeping your credit utilization low will result in good credit, while multiple late payments will equal lousy credit.

But when it comes to credit repair, purchasing tradelines might not have as big an impact. For example, traditional credit card revolving tradelines are not as crucial to business credit. Instead, business loans and vendor accounts are much more critical.

So having an authorized user credit line reporting to the business credit bureaus likely won’t make much of a dent in your credit scores.

When it comes to business credit repair, you can buy credit tradelines. Just don’t expect excellent credit to come from it.