Note that in order to use Experian Boost, you must have at least one credit account, whether it's a credit card or a personal loan, which would make this a bad option for anyone considered to be credit invisible. By reporting their Netflix or water bill payments, consumers can see their credit scores improve based on monthly payments that are not traditionally used to calculate a credit score. Using Experian Boost®Įxperian Boost is a free service that uses consumers' on-time utility, telecom and streaming subscription payments to calculate their FICO® Scores. Kikoff is geared toward helping credit invisible consumers and those with poor credit scores to improve their credit scores. Here's a look at some of the alternatives to using a service like Kikoff. While Kikoff is a relatively affordable option to build credit - using the service generally costs under $10 - there are several other credit-building products and methods out there that might be cheaper or provide more utility, or could even work in tandem with Kikoff. Lastly, Kickoff can help to improve the length of your credit history since users can keep the line of credit open even after they've finished purchasing items and paying them off - there are no fees associated with keeping a Kikoff line of credit open indefinitely. For example, if you purchased one item for $10 on Kikoff, you'd then only have a credit utilization ratio of 2%, which would also help improve your credit score. The Kikoff credit line also helps users maintain a low credit utilization ratio, which experts traditionally recommend keeping between 10% and 30%. Kikoff will not sell customers' delinquent loans to external collection agencies. Users then have 30 days beyond the due date to make a payment before the missing one is reported to the credit bureaus. However, if users do not make their minimum monthly payment on time, they will receive email and text reminders letting them know it is overdue. Since FICO reports your on-time monthly payments to the major credit bureaus, using Kikoff would help improve your payment history. Five factors comprise your FICO credit score: your payment history (35%), the amounts owed (30%), the length of your credit history (15%), new credit (10%) and the credit mix (10%). The intention behind Kikoff is to help users improve their FICO credit scores. Kikoff then reports your payment history to two of the three major credit bureaus, Experian and Equifax. The items on average cost $20, and users are required to make a minimum monthly payment of $5. While Chen won't disclose specifics on the particular products offered in the store, she notes that there are financial literacy and entrepreneurship e-books and courses. This can in turn can help people boost their credit scores. By using the Kikoff line of credit and purchasing an item in the store, users will have a Kikoff credit account that gets reported to some of the major credit bureaus. Users then use this line of credit to purchase an item from the Kikoff proprietary store.Ĭhen recommends thinking about Kikoff as if it's a payment option that can only be used in the Kikoff store. Kikoff is a credit-building product that offers all consumers a $750 revolving line of credit without charging any interest or fees on the credit line. "I realized that there was a pretty big gap in servicing this population because the existing solutions in the industry were very expensive."īelow, Select takes a closer look at how Kikoff works as well as some other options that exist for people interested in building up their credit scores. "When I was working in consumer finance at different financial institutions, I noticed that there were a lot of people who were like me who didn't have the most affluent family background," says Chen. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, low-income neighborhoods tended to have higher rates of credit invisible individuals compared to high-income neighborhoods, while Black and Hispanic consumers were more likely to be credit invisible than their white and Asian counterparts.Ĭhen founded Kikoff in 2019 with the intention of helping those who lack credit histories or have poor credit scores. The report highlighted a disproportionate impact on low-income as well as Black and Hispanic consumers.
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