Barclaycard - how to increase credit limit?

adindas

mitbrille said:

I was accepted to Barclaycard 0% 12 months purchase with £3500 limit recently.
I have an Amex with £6500 limit.
I have good credit score.

I would like to use only Barclaycard from now. What are the steps/hacks to increase credit limit in a short amount of time?
I am planning to get a higher credit limit, pay off the minimum amount monthly and keep the money in Barclays Rainy Day Saver with 5% interest. Pay off anything remaining at the end of 12 months.

Asking Amex to reduce credit limit then Barclays to increase it, would that work? Any other option?
Income: £32000
Monthly saving: £300-500

No other credit card, no loan, nothing on finance, no student loan repayment.

Thank you for the help.

My personal experience they are unlikely to increase your limit while you are still on the 0% promotional deal for obvious reason.

Unless the credit card provider is the same banks, so they could shuffle the limit between the two cards, reducing the limit of your other card from another banks is unlikely to have any effect to the decision to increase your other credit card to another bank, unless you apply as a new applicant where they will check all the credit lines you have got. So asking Amex to reduce your credit is unlikely to have any effect on the decision on Barclay.

But in your case, you also have another barrier with the current 0% deal you have.

But please take this with a pinch of salt and this should not be preventing you to try, as you have nothing to lose trying. Also my personal experience will not necessarily be the same with yours.

mitbrille

Brie said:

Tell them you are about to make a large purchase that you plan to pay off over a few months.  Like buying a car.  Know how much the car is going to cost you and ask for that amount.  That has normally worked for me (because I was actually buying a car).

Do make sure you have the DD set up to make minimum payments to ensure you don't miss any payments.

Thanks for your suggestion and I find it to be a logical solution. I will follow your advice in six months' time.

Alex9384

grumbler said:

3-4 months is too short time. Normally it takes years, not months.

Not years. Typical period is 6 months for most card providers, however,
I was able to increase my limit on new Amex after just 3 months. On Lloyds CC in 3-4 months too. In the case of Lloyds, I bought a car on the card and pretty much maxed it out.

With Barclaycard, my initial limit was 5k, but I didn't try to increase it for more than a year since account opening, so I can't tell if they would have allowed it or not. Eventually I increased the limit to a bit over 8k through 3 increases, then I took their Money Transfer offer and again, pretty much maxed out the card. I was paying minimum payments and they later reduced my credit limit because of that. They got scared that I was in financial trouble even though I wasn't. So that was the main difference between Lloyds and Barclaycard. When Lloyds saw I need more, they offered me more. Barclaycard did the opposite.