Credit glossary
Tradeline
Industry shorthand for a single account entry on your credit report, with its balance, limit, status, dates and payment history.
Every card, loan and many collection accounts appear as tradelines. Each carries the same core fields: the creditor's name and partial account number, account type, your responsibility for it, dates opened and last reported, limit or original amount, balance and past-due amount, status, and a month-by-month payment grid. Most of what drives your scores sits in these entries, one tradeline at a time.
The word also shows up in a scheme called buying tradelines, where a broker adds you as an authorized user on a stranger's card for a fee. FICO says FICO 8 was built to reduce the effect of that tampering, Fannie Mae limits how such accounts count, and regulators have penalized sellers. Building your own tradelines takes longer but holds up under a lender's review.
Guides that go deeper
- How to read your credit report, line by line and field by fieldWhat each section and field on an Equifax, Experian or TransUnion report means, which dates matter most, and how to tell normal entries from real errors.
- Buying tradelines: how rented credit works and where it backfiresPaying to be an authorized user on a stranger's card can move some scores briefly. How FICO, mortgage underwriters and regulators treat it.
Sources
- What is a credit report?, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Fair Isaac innovation will restore authorized user accounts to calculation of FICO 08 scores (July 31, 2008), FICO
- B3-5.3-06, Authorized Users of Credit, Fannie Mae Selling Guide
- CROA case shows why piggybacking isn't the answer for consumers shouldering bad credit, Federal Trade Commission
This is education, not legal or financial advice. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it.