Discover Expands Free Credit Score Access to the General Public

Not so long ago, it wasn’t possible to get a copy of your credit score without paying for it. Fortunately, due to the advocacy of consumer watchdogs and agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it’s become easier than ever to access your score. Now, a number of banks offer this information for free to their customers.

Up to this point, however, nearly all credit card issuers required an existing relationship in order to get a free score. Discover is looking to change that, once again taking a leadership role in expanding credit score access. In 2013, it was the first major credit card issuer to provide free credit scores (from TransUnion) to their customers on their monthly statements. On Friday, it is announcing it will become the first credit card issuer to provide free credit scores from Experian to the general public.

Discover Credit Scorecard

Discover’s new credit score product is called Credit Scorecard. The service provides online access to your Experian FICO Score 8 credit score, refreshed every 30 days. It also provides other information such as whether lenders see your score as good or poor, the most significant factors that contributed to your score, as well as the number of inquiries you’ve had in the last 12 months.

Who can sign up?

• You must be 18 or older and a U.S. resident or a resident of America Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands to use Credit Scorecard.
• Not everyone will receive a report. Reasons for this include:
  • Your credit history is too short
  • You have a foreign address
  • You may have key information that is mismatched or missing

Consumers are under no obligation to sign up for a Discover product in order to use the service. However, while Discover promises not to sell your information, they may use it to contact you and share your information with their service providers to assist in providing you with Credit Scorecard and offering other Discover products, even if you have previously opted out of receiving these offers.

In the meantime, Discover will continue to offer its existing cardmembers their free TransUnion credit scores on their monthly statements.

For more information on Credit Scorecard or to try it out, see this link.