I don’t care that much about my credit score but I will take it if it’s handed to me. Alliant Credit Union gives me a VantageScore from Experian every quarter. Now my credit card company Barclaycard will give me a FICO score from TransUnion every month.
If you have the Priceline Rewards card, the US Airways card, or the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard® that pays 2.2% reward toward travel, or any other card issued by Barclaycard, here’s how to get your free FICO score sent to you by email every month:
1. Log in to your account. Click on Account settings.
2. Find the Alerts section in account settings. Click on Edit.
3. Scroll down to the bottom. Enable the alert for FICO Score changed. Click on Save.
I haven’t got any alert email yet. Maybe it will come when the statement closes.
If you want your FICO score now, you can manually change the URL. After you log in, put in ‘/score’ after ‘servicing’ like this:
That’s how I got mine shown at the beginning of this article. Hat tip to FatWallet Finance poster downercow. It looks like they will add a button under “Tools and education” but they haven’t yet.
If you are looking for a good reward card, Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard® is a good one. It gives you 2.2% reward on every purchase toward travel expenses. In addition to the usual rental car insurance, extended warranty, etc., this card also offers no foreign transaction fee, price protection, and trip cancellation and trip interruption benefits. 40,000 bonus points effectively pay for the annual fee for six years.
If you don’t like the annual fee, there is also a no annual fee version Barclaycard Arrival™ World MasterCard®, which gives you 2% rewards only on travel and dining, not on everything. There is still no foreign transaction fee.
The free FICO score adds a small piece of icing on the cake.
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dan23 says
You can also get transunion and experian free from credit karma and credit sesame.
Harry says
True but those are educational scores, not the real thing. Probably good enough though if your bank or credit card doesn’t give you a real FICO score.
See Where to get your truly free credit score from Consumer Reports.
dan23 says
Thanks. I did not realize that – I thought the transunion one from credit karma was real based on how it was described. I checked my Barclays and it is a different number (13 points higher than credit karma’s, though credit karma last updated 2 weeks ago). A note to other Barclays card holders – if you don’t have it on the webpage, you can go to https://www.barclaycardus.com/servicing/score and see it.
If you know, what is the difference between the two scores – does transunion itself hand out fake scores and what are they used for?
Harry says
As I understand, the credit report from a credit bureau provides the raw data points. Then someone applies an algorithm to calculate a score. Different algorithms produce different scores on the same raw input. From Credit Karma’s FAQ:
“Credit Karma provides the TransRisk New Account Score, VantageScore, and Auto Insurance Risk Score from TransUnion.”
I read that as saying the algorithms come from TransUnion, not FICO. The score from Barclaycard is a FICO algorithm applied to your TransUnion credit report.
Ethan says
It also worked for the US Airways MasterCard I have with them.
Jeff says
Thanks for the tip on the Barclaycard Arrival… I had been looking for a better reward card, and this one is the best out there I saw. I put together a spreadsheet with my spending habits so far this year and determined the Barclaycard would have yielded $707 in rewards, compared with my card’s $490, and that is actually subtracting the $89 annual fee which will be waived, and not including the bonus miles. With the $440 bonus they have right now, this was a no-brainer. Hopefully you get something for the referral link.
Regarding the FICO score, it only took a day after a applying for it for mine to show up–they actually do have a link to it under the “Tools and education” section for you to get to at any time.
Steve says
Are the Barclay cards chip-and-pin? Or just plain old, US-only magnetic stripe?
Harry says
Just magnetic stripe.
Will says
Walmart offers a similar product to their credit card holders. Although the rewards points are much better on the Barclays products so it’s not worth signing up just for the FICO score.
Brian says
The Discover family of cards are also offering a free FICO score. Since they have no annual fee and offer nice 5% rewards categories, if you want free Transunion FICO scores I would go with Discover.