If you’ve been listening to my interviews and podcasts or reading the blogs, you know one of the things I promote is being able to use business credit.
A big part of growing a business or investing in a business is the ability to access lines of credit to further your business.
Whether that means using it as a way to buy inventory or to help promote your business, business credit is the most efficient and effective way toward growth.
Business tradelines can be a great way to help finance a business instead of going through business loans, especially if you’re just starting your business.
But what are business tradelines, why are they important, and how do you gain access to them?
What are Business Tradelines?
What exactly are business tradelines?
Basically, this is a credit account that’s established between a business and a vendor.
In many cases, the vendor or supplier will offer payment terms where the business can pay for purchases in a certain amount of time.
This allows businesses the ability to preserve cash flow, by not having to pay the costs upfront.
Business tradelines are similar to paid tradelines, which can be used to help build up your personal credit.
I’ve spoken at length as to why having good personal credit is the stepping stone toward gaining access to good business credit.
But why?
How does having good personal credit help with business credit?
Why Good Personal Credit Leads to Better Business Credit
There are a few reasons why your good credit rating helps you to access better business credit:
Better approval rates when applying for new credit cards or loans
Lower interest rates
Established banking relationships for further credit cards
Better credit card offerings
Building up personal credit can start with using paid tradelines. So what are paid tradelines?
A paid tradeline is a line of credit that is reported to your credit report. In the simplest of terms, things like car loans, students, and credit cards are tradelines.
For our purposes, paid tradelines are accounts that can be used to boost your credit score on a temporary basis.
An ideal scenario would be added to a family member’s credit card, as an authorized user. This allows their credit use and score to be reflected on your credit report.
This scenario is a preferred one because
It’s free
You can be listed on the card for as long as the family member lists you, which can be a very long time!
While this is the easiest way to gain access to a tradeline, it’s not the only one. That’s where paid tradelines come in.
Paid tradelines, sometimes known as paid authorized users (AU), allow you to pay for access to be added as an authorized user to someone’s credit card.
Costs for paid tradelines can be anywhere between $200-800, depending on the age of the card. The benefit of this is that the card will report to your credit file.
For instance, let’s say you pay $225 to be added as an authorized user to a card that has been opened for 15 years.
Once the card is reported to your credit file, it will stay there for the next 30 days.
This should not only boost your credit score, but allow you to apply for any specific card within that time frame.
How to Access Paid Tradelines
We’ve talked about what business tradelines are and how paid tradelines can help with your personal credit, so you can access business credit.
But how do you find authorized paid tradelines?
Coast Tradelines is one of our trusted partners and who we recommend for paid tradelines. They update every month to showcase new tradelines.
When deciding on tradelines, the thing you want to look for is age – that is, the age of the account.
The more age an account has, the more history that’s attached to it, which will be reflected on your credit score for the month.
The Credit Tradelines website is fairly easy to maneuver:
Under ‘Services’, click on the ‘AU Tradelines’ option.
Click ‘View tradelines’ and you’ll get a list of banks and tradelines you’ll have access to.
If you aren’t sure which tradelines are right for you, the site does a ranking to show which ones are best for you.
Once you find a tradeline you want to apply for, click on the ‘x’ and select “Complete AU information” and then continue filling out the form
It’s crucial that you fill out the form correctly (like email, SSN, etc), because if not, it won’t report correctly, and you’ll have wasted a lot of time and money.
After you’ve submitted your order, you’ll be taken to a thank you page. Here, there will be a walkthrough on how to pay for the order.
I suggest using Zelle. It’s a fast and easy way to send and receive money and it connects to a growing list of banks.
Once your payment has been submitted, make sure you save your receipt and then upload it for proof of purchase.
And that’s how to access paid tradelines.
Once everything is complete, someone from Coast Tradelines will reach out to you to confirm that the AU has been reported.
From there, you have 30 days to show that user on your report, so make the most of it!
Paid tradelines are a great way to help boost your personal credit score, which then helps build the path to accessing business credit.
If you still have questions, or you want to start building credit and accessing business credit, be sure to join our community!