Note, August 2026: I no longer sell tradelines. I closed the store and wrote up why, with the actual numbers. This page stays up because the questions below are the ones people kept asking me for years, and the answers don’t stop being true just because I stopped selling. Nothing here is an offer — it’s what I learned running the thing.
About tradelines
What is a tradeline
In the broadest sense, a tradeline is any account that appears on your credit report. Mortgages, auto loans, student loans, furniture loans, jewelry loans, installment loans, and of course credit cards of all types.
When people search for tradelines, though, they usually mean something narrower: an authorized user tradeline. That's when you pay to be added as an authorized user on someone else's credit card. The account then appears on your credit report, flagged as authorized user.How do tradelines help?
Tradelines help in two ways: they improve your credit line utilization, and they improve your average credit line age. Those two factors are part of the calculation behind roughly 30% and 15% of your FICO score respectively.
What cards help with credit line utilization?
Cards with a high credit limit.
For example, if your total credit line is $10,000 and you are using $5,000 of it, your utilization is 50%. Add a tradeline with a $20,000 limit and negligible use and your new utilization is 16.6% ($5,000/$30,000).What cards help with average card age?
Cards that have been open for a long time.
For instance, if you have two cards, one 1 year old and one 2 years old, your average card age is 1.5 years. Adding a card that is 12 years old moves your average to 5 years (15 total years divided by 3 cards).What if I have collections?
Fix those first — pay them off, set up a payment plan, or work through a credit repair process. A tradeline does not cancel out a collection. It adds age and available limit; it doesn't remove anything.
How much will my score go up?
Impossible to say in advance, and be suspicious of anyone who tells you otherwise. In my own sales it was usually around 50 points, assuming nothing else changed. I saw 100+ point moves, but those were people with thin files rather than damaged ones. Nobody can guarantee a number.
How the authorized user process works
What actually happens, step by step
The cardholder adds you as an authorized user on their card. The bank issues a card in your name — you normally never receive it, and you never have spending access. At the next reporting cycle the bank sends the account to the credit bureaus with you attached, and the account's full history lands on your report.
You are not liable for the balance. You also have no control over it, which is the risk: if the cardholder runs the card up or pays late, that lands on your report too.When does it show up on my reports?
Roughly 15 days after the card's closing date — not 15 days after you pay. If you buy the day after a closing date, you are waiting the better part of two months. This trips up almost everyone buying against a mortgage or auto loan deadline.
How do I know I was actually added?
The account appears on your credit report and in free monitoring tools like Credit Karma. Ask the cardholder for a photo of the card showing your name with the number hidden — that confirms the add happened before the reporting cycle does.
How long does it stay on my report?
As long as you remain an authorized user, plus however long the bureaus keep reporting it after removal — usually it drops off at the next cycle once you're taken off. Most sellers hold you on the card for two months or so.
What to check before you buy from anyone
What information will a seller ask for?
Full name, date of birth, address, and Social Security number, usually with photo ID. That is genuinely the minimum a bank requires to add an authorized user — it isn't a seller being nosy.
What it does mean is that you are handing your identity to a stranger. Check who you're dealing with before you send any of it.Should I hand over my Credit Karma login?
I used to ask for it, to verify buyers were real and to check whether a card posted. I would not hand mine to a stranger today, and I don't think you should either. A screenshot of your report answers the same question without giving anyone standing access to your accounts.
What should make you walk away?
Anyone who guarantees a specific score. Anyone who suggests a CPN, a "credit privacy number," or any number that isn't your real SSN — that is identity fraud and it is the buyer who gets prosecuted. Anyone who won't tell you the card's limit, age, and utilization before you pay. Anyone with no refund position at all.
Is any of this legal?
Adding an authorized user is a normal, documented feature of every major credit card. Paying someone to do it is legal in the United States, and FICO has explicitly looked at authorized user accounts and continued to score them. The illegal part of this industry is the CPN side, and that is a different thing entirely.
For the official view on credit repair claims generally, the CFPB is the source worth reading.
More on all of this in my posts about tradelines, or the write-up of why I closed the store. If you have a question this page doesn’t answer, ask me.