Will the credit score be lowered if I pay a credit card bill with a check from another credit card?

Question

I want to see if I can get maximum flyer's mileage/cash back from both credit cards.

Answer 1

It might depending on what your maximum limits are. I will use two examples to illustrate:

Example 1:
Credit Card #1 at 50% maximum balance
Credit Card #2 at 50% maximum balance

Example 2:
Credit Card #1 at 90% maximum balance
Credit Card #2 at 10% maximum balance

Generally, your credit score will look better with example 1. I recommend keeping your debt evened out.

Also be careful about the balance transfer fees. The typical fee is 3% of the balance being transferred (up to a maximum of $75). It may vary with different credit cards.

Answer 2

There are some missing and important variables here. If the "other" credit card has a zero balance and you use it to make a payment on an account...not pay off the balance, but make a payment, then you could run the risk of a slight decrease as you have just created two accounts with balances. However, if they both currently have balances and you're just moving money around from card to card, then you should not incur any credit score issues. Keep in mind though, that checks are treated as cash withdrawals and are probably at 21% interest rate or more. You might do well to just buy the plane ticket and forget about trying to accumulate miles.

Answer 3

As SOME have stated above, the movement in your credit score will depend on the ending balances of the credit cards after you've moved the money. One variable on your credit score is how much credit do you have in total vs. How much of that credit have you actually used. Moving money from one card to another will not change your overall balance, but if you transfer money from one credit card to another and it uses up a significant amount of the remaining balance on the receiving card, you could have a negative effect on your credit score. The Fair Issac equation will look at the fact one of your credit cards are beyond a certain threshold even though the other credit cards balance has decreased.

Answer 4

No, your credit score will not go down or up. I believe a part of the formula to calculate your credit score is the ratio between the amount you own in all your credit cards over the total amount of all your credit card limits.

Since you are just shifting one credit card debt to another, the ratio is still the same. Therefore, your credit score will not change for the better.

Answer 5

Probably not in the end since your overall debt and overall available credit will remain the same. For a short period (a month or two) it may go up or down depending on the timing of the reports each card makes to the credit bureaus.

Answer 6

Not at all. Just remember some of the cards have fees for balance transfers.

Answer 7

It depends on your available balance, if you are close to your limit on the one card than yes, if you have ample available credit on the other card then NO.

Answer 8

No, all numerical to them unless it's a really big transaction.