Will wihdrawing cash from credit card abroad hurt credit score?

Anthorn

AJJJ wrote: »

Hello


I am living in India for some time now, coming from the UK. In order to save hefty non-sterling transaction/withdrawal fees, I got a Barclaycard Platinum Visa Credit card with 0% non-sterling fees.


Everything has been working wonderfully and it seems a super cheap way to access money whilst over here (compared to my debit card). However I have just been told that withdrawing cash from a credit card will hurt my ability to get a mortgage in the future. I am aware that lenders don't consider things like this in isolation, and I would hope that they acknowledge I am doing this not because of financial difficulty but to avoid transaction fees whilst abroad. I pay off my monthly bill in full.


Will my activity hurt my borrowing ability in the future?


Thanks

I think most of us agree that there is no such thing as a marker which adversely affects credit when it appears on a credit report. It depends on how many of them appear on the credit report and the related time span.

Credit reports contain various pieces of information which allow lenders to create a financial profile based on "trends" or what is more accurately referred to as "patterns of behaviour". So a few isolated events shared by lenders are unlikely to form a pattern and are therefore unlikely to affect credit. But do it more often and it becomes a pattern.

In the OP's case of regular cash withdrawals using the credit card, this creates a pattern of behaviour which indicates financial stress. I do not think that where it's done nor the currency nor the name of the card nor the type of card affects that evaluation since that information does not appear on the credit report that lenders see.

In a nutshell, I therefore differ from the previous replies: Repeated cash withdrawals indicate financial stress and will most definitely affect the ability to obtain credit in the future!

http://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/questions/askjames358.html