Applying for first time credit card (chasing reward points)

General Gibberish Forums
1

My daughter is looking at applying for her first CC with a view to pocketing some bonus reward points for the family. Full disclosure - I would be managing & paying the card off on her behalf, so there are no issues in terms of her keeping on top of bills. We are just doing it for the points.

But I’m keen to know - what do the banks look for when reviewing an application from a first timer? Anyone have any insights? I only want to make 1 application (max 2) as I don’t want to degrade her credit rating, so I want to give it the best chance of success.

She is a recent graduate, 3 months into her first real job (fixed term contract earning around $80k p.a.) with $50k savings. I assume her credit rating will be pretty neutral.

I guess low credit limit will be important, so I’m thinking maybe something with a minimum credit limit of $3k that generates around 100k points over a couple of years (e.g. Westpac Altitude Qantas Platinum).

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income and expenses really.

they’re also all doing lock in periods, so you can’t point hop like you could 6 months ago.

3

No.

If you are after the points: generally you want to get all* of the cards, in sequence. She’s not going to be spending enough for the day-to-day purchases to be worth a significant proportion of the sign-up bonuses.




*OK, some aren’t worth it.

4

I’ve been doing the earn, burn, churn thing forever but am assuming not to do this under her name as it will degrade her credit rating. So it would be more of a one-off in this case.

5

What do you mean by lock-in periods - the extra bonus points after 12 months?

6

they’re pushing more and more of those points to the waiting period. and 18 months

7

Yeah. That’s prob OK in this case as I wouldn’t be churning. What I don’t know is how banks assess risk in her case. Straight income / expense is easy if that’s all they look at.

8

She’ll also have to be careful of any expenses like Gambling when they assess her bank statements. They will ask about it.

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9

I have never been asked for specific transaction data for a CC application.

As noted, in Australia bad history (CC or otherwise) and income / spend is the vast bulk of consideration.

In this case, they may not believe her still-at-home spending numbers and bump it up accordingly.

10

Only ever had one CC granted it was years ago but I was asked specificly about gambling and bottle shop purchases.

11

Definitely getting harder. I’ve earnt and churned for many years and pay every thing via credit card. There are still some decent programs out there but yeah the requirements to apply for one are all the same. History of earn, spending etc.

my bank manager did once tell me that defaults on Telco’s are a huge red flag when they are looking at applications and are one of the most common reasons they reject them

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