People find my site searching for ways to monetize good credit, which is exactly how I found this business in the first place. I remember spending a surprising amount of time Googling “make money with good credit” before I stumbled onto a forum thread that mentioned selling authorized user tradelines. Once I understood the model, it made sense. You add someone as an authorized user on a card you already have. They get the benefit of your card’s history on their credit report for a couple of months. You get paid for it. Nobody shares a physical card. If you’re wondering whether you can pay to be an authorized user on someone else’s account, the short answer is yes — and it’s a common way to build credit quickly.
What you’re actually selling
When someone buys a tradeline from a seller like me, they’re paying for a temporary authorized user slot on one of my credit cards. The card gets added to their credit report — same way it would if a spouse or family member added them. The buyer doesn’t get a physical card, can’t make charges, and has no access to my account. They just get the reporting benefit: the card’s credit limit, age, and utilization show up on their report for the duration of the arrangement (usually three billing cycles).
The two things that drive a tradeline’s value are limit and age. A $25,000 card opened years ago is worth more to a buyer than a $5,000 card opened recently, because it adds more to their available credit and more to their average account age. Issuers matter less than people think — a seasoned Capital One card does the same thing on a buyer’s report as a seasoned Chase card. The logo is irrelevant once the data hits the bureaus.
How the money works
There are two main ways to sell: through a broker or directly. Brokers like Tradeline Supply Company, Boost Credit 101, Coast Tradelines, and Improve My Credit Fitness handle the buyer side — they find customers, validate their information, and send you the data you need to add the AU. In exchange, they take a significant cut. The typical split is roughly 70% to the broker, 30% to you as the cardholder. So if a buyer pays $200 for a spot on your card, you might net $60.
Direct sales (like through my WooCommerce store) let you skip the broker cut entirely. That changes the economics considerably. The tradeoff is you have to find buyers yourself and handle the logistics — collecting their information, adding them, confirming the post, and removing them after the holding period. Not complicated, but it’s more work than just responding to broker emails.
Either way, brokers require your cards to be “seasoned” — typically at least two years old — before they’ll list them. Newer cards don’t have enough age to make them worth selling through most platforms.
What the process looks like
Once a sale comes in (through a broker or your own store), you get the buyer’s first name, last name, and sometimes a Social Security number. You log into your card issuer’s website and add them as an authorized user. Then you wait for their next statement to close — that’s when the card posts to the bureau. After three billing cycles, you remove them.
The timing matters. Brokers send the data a day or two before the card’s statement close date, so you have a narrow window to add the user before that cycle closes. Miss it and the sale gets pushed to the next cycle, which delays the buyer’s result and creates headaches all around.
Some issuers are more reliable than others for this. Capital One, Barclays, and US Bank post authorized users consistently. Citi is notorious for missing AU postings — it’s not rare to add someone and have the tradeline never show on their report. I’ve had buyers report that Citi slots just didn’t post, and there’s not much you can do when that happens.
The risks worth knowing upfront
The biggest risk is account closure. Bank of America in particular has a history of closing cards — and sometimes other accounts — when they detect tradeline-selling activity. I had a $40,000 BoA card closed on me at one point. (That one stung.) The card was one of my better-performing ones, and losing it wasn’t just an inconvenience — it affected my own credit profile too. BoA is widely considered the riskiest issuer for this business. You probably already know which cards in your wallet are BoA.
There’s also the Amex quirk worth knowing if you’re considering selling an Amex card: since around 2015, American Express reports authorized users with the date the AU was added as the account open date, not the card’s original open date. So a 15-year-old Amex card looks like a brand-new account from the buyer’s perspective. That makes Amex tradelines mostly worthless to buyers seeking age benefit — which is why you’ll see Amex listings priced low or not listed at all through most brokers.
Is it worth it?
Honestly, the income is modest unless you scale it up across multiple cards and multiple issuers. With a handful of cards listed through brokers plus some direct sales, it can generate a few hundred dollars a month — passive in the sense that you’re not doing much work, but not enough to replace a real income stream. I treat it as a side income that takes maybe an hour of actual work per month once things are set up.
If you want to sell tradelines through my site, fill out the seller form here. I’ll review the cards, give you a sense of what they’d list for, and walk you through the process. And if you’re on the buyer side — looking to add a tradeline to your own report — you can browse what’s available in the store.
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