How Does Authorized User Piggybacking Work?

How Does Authorized User Piggybacking Work?

Here’s how piggybacking works as an authorized user:

When you are added as an authorized user to someone’s credit card, often (depending on the bank), the full history of that account will then be shown in your credit report, regardless of when you were added to the card.

Therefore, piggybacking can almost instantly add years of perfect payment history to the authorized user’s credit file.

Authorized user tradelines can affect many important credit variables, such as your average age of accounts, age of oldest account, overall utilization ratio, number of accounts, mix of accounts, and more.

Historically, only the wealthy and privileged were able to use piggybacking as a credit-building strategy. Now, there is a marketplace where tradelines can be bought and sold, which is helping to democratize the credit system and provide equal credit opportunity.