I wanna increase my credit card limit

[Deleted User]

jelockwood wrote: »

Ironically I suspect if I was with the bigger more expensive names e.g. BT and British Gas they might show up and then the fact I was not in debt to them would 'boost' my score despite the fact I was 'wasting' money.

Changing gas suppler won't change the risk you present to a credit card company, even if it were to impress Experian.

PixelPound

jelockwood wrote: »

I did ring them to ask for an increase and got the level I was asking for rejected. They clearly can only punch my details in to a computer and accept its results making the human in the loop a waste of time. I did ask about over paying to end up with a positive balance and therefore in theory more available to spend and was told their systems prevented this so as to prevent money laundering. (The over payment would be blocked and returned to your bank account.)

Different cards have different policies when regarding rises, so the rejection may not have anything to do with your situation and everything to do with the amount of increase requested. Lets say you had a card that was applied for when you were on a low income in training, a couple of years later when qualified your wage is 10 times as much and you had a large Disposable Income, a provider may reject an increase request of more than 10% or 20% and not take your improved financial circumstances into account.

jelockwood wrote: »

So so far the best option is to make a deposit payment to gain S75 protection.

I even looked at Clear Scores' tips and it turns out I was already doing everything they listed.

paying the deposit with the card will get the protection, don't worry about what clearscore say, unless they suddenly start offering their own credit cards!

[Deleted User]

Why would you want to “boost your score”?

Do you like improving imaginary numbers?

Terry_Towelling

jelockwood wrote: »

I did ask about over paying to end up with a positive balance and therefore in theory more available to spend and was told their systems prevented this so as to prevent money laundering. (The over payment would be blocked and returned to your bank account.)

So so far the best option is to make a deposit payment to gain S75 protection.

The suggestion that overpaying is somehow connected to money-laundering is nonsense. Any level of payment could be 'hot' money.

Imagine you overpay by £10K to gain a positive balance. Now imagine you don't do this but you simply settle a £10K credit card debt. You've still paid the same £10K from the same source, so how is the risk of money-laundering any higher? If Amex really told you this, they were fobbing you off.

So, yes, talk to the seller and pay a deposit by one credit card and the balance by another means (even your other credit card).

Nuff said - enjoy your holidays.

PixelPound

Terry_Towelling wrote: »

The suggestion that overpaying is somehow connected to money-laundering is nonsense. Any level of payment could be 'hot' money.

Imagine you overpay by £10K to gain a positive balance. Now imagine you don't do this but you simply settle a £10K credit card debt. You've still paid the same £10K from the same source, so how is the risk of money-laundering any higher? If Amex really told you this, they were fobbing you off.

Nope. If you purposely overpay 10K and ask for the cash back, that's what they consider for money-laundering. If you spend £10K and pay it off, you don't have the 10k anymore.

Terry_Towelling

nic_c wrote: »

Nope. If you purposely overpay 10K and ask for the cash back, that's what they consider for money-laundering. If you spend £10K and pay it off, you don't have the 10k anymore.

Quite prepared to bow to more informed knowledge on the subject of money laundering but it still doesn't ring true.

If you spend £10K on credit and pay it off with 'hot' money, not only have you laundered it, you've also managed to spend it too. If you then take the goods back and ask for a refund, you get a £10K credit balance that will then be paid back to you - money successfully laundered!

You could also take out ATM cash and pay that off with 'hot' money - laundering success! - although you end up with cumbersome cash rather than an account balance.

How about an MT card? Pay the MT into your bank account and pay off the credit card with 'hot' money.

Surely, if an overpayment is regarded as laundering, the card company should refuse to apply it to your account and not give it back to you either. If they return an overpayment to your current account, doesn't that amount to successful laundering if the cash was 'hot'?

In fact, if you intend to launder, why bother doing any of that? Why not just make ATM withdrawals from your current account to clean your money? Ok you get the same problem as above in that you have a bunch of notes rather than an account balance but your cash is clean.

Surely the party guilty of allowing money to be laundered would be the bank that accepted your initial deposit and then allowed you to access it or pass it on to a credit card company. It doesn't matter whether you end up with goods or cash for your 'hot' money - it is the laundering that is the problem and any payment to a credit card company with 'hot' money (overpayment or normal payment) carries the same laundering risk.

Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

gionnetto

jelockwood wrote: »

It also seems that even the agencies like Experian themselves do not look at savings or owning a house outright and merely look at debts e.g. current mortgage, or having to pay rent. They seem to purely look at bad aspects and not at good aspects of a persons financial state.

Wrong.

Lenders lend you money. In order to do so, you need to have a history of repaying debt. Repaying debts is a GOOD aspect. That is because, even if you had plenty of savings and a huge salary, that would only mean that you COULD pay, not that you will. The likes of celebrities such Tory Spelling comes to my mind.

Lenders use past behaviour (repayments) to predict future behaviours when they take their decisions. No/scant past behaviour, no way to predict future behaviour. No way to predict future behaviour, no credit.

PixelPound

Terry_Towelling wrote: »

Quite prepared to bow to more informed knowledge on the subject of money laundering but it still doesn't ring true.

If you spend £10K on credit and pay it off with 'hot' money, not only have you laundered it, you've also managed to spend it too. If you then take the goods back and ask for a refund, you get a £10K credit balance that will then be paid back to you - money successfully laundered!

A large overpayment in "error" and asking for a refund is a trigger to check for money laundering under FCA rules. You can lauder money in a variety of ways, like you mention, and it really does not matter if there is any difference or not, I was more pointing out the fact it may flag is that the financial industry look at particular actions as needing a closer look at. Lets say you have a CC and go and pay £10-£20 a month religiously and never any more and one month suddenly go in and pay £2000, there would be an expectation to find out where that money came from.

chattychappy

Any out-of-character transaction can, in theory, raise suspicions - just by it's abnormality. But in practice this is unlikely where the source of funds is the same old UK bank account (or debit card) that the cardholder usually uses to pay bills. As a source of funds, UK bank accounts are seen as low risk. Pre-loading and then spending out via a CC isn't so different from spending and then paying back. If I were a MLRO, what would concern me would a pre-loading followed by a refund to a different account or a money transfer attempt*.

The real reason for the prohibition on pre-loading is that deposit taking is subject to a separate regulatory regime from that of consumer lending. If, as a policy, a CC allowed pre-loading of CC accounts then they would enter a whole new world of compliance in respect of those balances.

(*a customer apparently willing to waste money on fees on a contrived transaction is a certain red flag.)