I found out you could sell tradelines to earn money the same way most people do — by accident. I was digging around the Mr. Money Mustache forum, looking for something more useful to do with my credit cards, and someone mentioned authorized user tradelines. (I remember thinking it sounded almost too passive to be real. I still think that sometimes.)
The concept is simple enough: you add someone to your credit card as an authorized user, they get the benefit of your card’s age and limit reflected on their credit report for about three months, and you get paid for it. But simple doesn’t mean frictionless. There are a few things I wish someone had told me before I ran my first card through a broker.
How it actually works
When you add an authorized user to your credit card, the card’s history — its age, limit, payment record — appears on their credit report. Tradeline buyers use that to improve their credit score, usually ahead of applying for a mortgage, a car loan, or an apartment rental.
Your role as a seller is straightforward: add the authorized user within the 24–48 hour window before your statement closes, then remove them once the two reporting cycles are complete. You never hand over your card number, your PIN, or any access to the account. They may get a physical card mailed to them (or not — it varies by issuer), but you’ll never speak with them.
Most sellers start with a broker: Tradeline Supply Company, Boost Credit 101, Improve My Credit Fitness, Coast Tradelines. The broker finds the buyers, handles matching, and pays you after the cycles complete. Their cut is significant — roughly 70–75% of what the buyer paid. You keep the rest.
What you can realistically make
Your rate per slot depends on two variables: the card’s credit limit and its age. A 10-year-old card with a $25,000 limit earns considerably more than a 3-year-old card at $5,000. Depending on your card, you might see anywhere from $50 to $200 or more per two-month cycle through a broker. Tradeline Supply Company publishes rough estimates on their site if you want specific numbers before you sign up.
For most people with a handful of solid cards, this comes out to a few hundred dollars a month — real passive income that requires maybe an hour of total work per card per cycle. The ceiling goes up as you add more seasoned, high-limit cards, but so does the administrative overhead.
One thing brokers don’t emphasize upfront: your card has to be seasoned before they’ll list it. Most require at least two years of history, a clean payment record, and a credit limit above their threshold (which varies by broker). A new card can’t earn anything until it ages.
Which issuers work — and which to avoid
Not all credit cards are equal from a seller’s perspective. Capital One, Barclays, and US Bank report authorized users reliably and without much drama. Fidelity’s card is another solid option. Chase cards tend to sell faster on broker platforms because buyers like the brand name — though once the data hits a credit report, the issuer logo doesn’t actually affect the score any differently than any other card with the same limit and age.
Citi is one I’d skip. They have a well-documented reputation for missing authorized user postings entirely — the AU just doesn’t always show up on the buyer’s report, which leads to refund requests and unhappy brokers.
Bank of America is a different kind of risk. BoA has been known to close cards — and sometimes other accounts held by the same person — if they flag tradeline-selling activity. This happened to me with a $40,000 BoA card: closed without warning, no appeal. It was the most expensive lesson I’ve taken in this business, and I haven’t run a BoA card through the pipeline since.
One more worth knowing: American Express. Since around 2015, Amex reports the date the authorized user was added as the account open date, not the card’s original open date. That means a 20-year-old Amex looks like a brand-new account on the buyer’s credit report. The prestige of the brand is irrelevant once you understand this — Amex tradelines just aren’t worth what their age would suggest.
Brokers vs. selling direct
The broker model is the easiest entry point. You submit your cards, they handle sourcing buyers and logistics, and you collect payment after cycles close. The trade-off is that 70–75% cut, which starts to feel steep once you understand the process well enough to run it yourself.
Selling direct — finding your own buyers and skipping the middleman — means keeping the full price. I moved some of my inventory to my own WooCommerce store after my eBay account got banned (tradelines aren’t technically allowed there, and once I hit some volume, they flagged me and that was that). Direct sales take more front-end work: matching, fielding questions, handling follow-ups. But the margin difference is real enough to be worth it once you’ve got some experience under your belt.
Most sellers I know run both in parallel. Brokers handle the bulk of the volume; direct sales fill in the gaps and serve buyers who prefer a more personal setup. (That split has worked well enough for me — though I’ll admit the broker payments feel more automatic, which is nice on months when I’ve got other things going on.)
What can go wrong
The risks are modest but worth knowing. The BoA story is the clearest example: issuers can close your account if they decide they don’t like your activity, and there’s no recourse when that happens. Running high volume through a single issuer increases that exposure.
There’s also a class of products you’ll want to stay well away from: CPNs, marketed as “Credit Privacy Numbers.” The pitch is that you can build a new credit identity using a nine-digit number that isn’t your Social Security number. That’s synthetic identity fraud — a federal crime — and it has nothing to do with legitimate authorized user tradelines. Some sellers bundle them together, and some buyers confuse the two. If someone asks about CPNs in the same conversation as tradelines, that’s your signal to walk away.
Otherwise, the practical and legal risks of selling tradelines are manageable as long as you’re working with reputable brokers and sticking to reliable issuers.
If you want to skip the research phase and buy direct, I list tradelines for sale on this site — browse what’s currently available here. And if you’re interested in selling and want to list on this site, feel free to reach out; I’m happy to answer questions from the seller side.
Related: scaling my tradeline business — worth reading if this applies to you.
Things that I use, like, and am affiliated with:
Mint Mobile offers great cell phone service for $15 flat, get $15 off using the link. Get discounted phones with service activation and no contract.
I never spend money before I check Mr Rebates or Rakuten to get cashbacks, rebates, discounts, coupons or cheaper gift cards.