Zero balance on credit card

scott9678

This may seem like a stupid question! I am just about to transfer the remaining balance from a credit card and I was wondering if it boosts your credit score if you close the credit card account.

[Deleted User]

Whether it affects how lenders see you depends on your balances, limits, income, age of accounts as well as the other usual factors.

We'd need a lot more info to be able to give you an educated guess.

Ben8282

The only reason for wanting to boost credit score would be to obtain more credit so why not just keep the credit that you have instead of applying for more?

nyermen

As zx81 notes, your credit history is used very differently by every lender to calculate their own credit "score". Therefore, one lender could take into account the amount of available credit as the amount already available to borrow (as a bad thing), but another could take into account the zero balance (as a good thing). It's all a black box (I'm in software, and I've actually coded several bank credit score calculations - every one is very different. And they even vary on the product (eg Mortgage) being considered.

You may want to also consider your own current needs - perhaps keeping (and using?) depends on control - if you're tempted to spend and you know you don't want to, it may remove the temptation if you close it. Equally, if you travel on company business, having a backup card may be useful in case of problems.