Abu Nazir

have a capital one credit card in the uk, anyone have experience of transferring this particular card (or any for that matter) to the us without having to start over with a fresh application?

mrken30

I tried this, Capital One would not transfer and gave me a new card with $500 credit limit, completely useless. i was spending about $350 a month on gas alone at the time. The UK card has a £7000 limit. The only good thing was that it had no foreign transaction fees. I have since got other cards with stupidly high limits and Capital One card is now at $2500

scrubbedexpat091

Not likely.

I have one in Canada in good standing for 10 years now, although a low limit due to income level, and only one they would give me in the US was a secured card with a $200 initial limit, well it could be more if one has more cash to put on it to secure it.

Capital One seems to pretty much operate independently in each country so what you have in one country wont move over to another.

mrken30

The only card provider that used to transfer was Amex and maybe HSBC.

mrken30

Mine wasn't a secured card, so I can count myself lucky.

Abu Nazir

damn! how long did it take for them to increase your limit from 500 to 2500? i'm assuming you didn't have an existing credit rating in america and were starting from scratch?

scrubbedexpat091

I am not sure how they decide, only reason my score is low is because there is 0 items on my credit report, been about 10-13 years since I had credit of any sort there, oddly back then Capital One approved me without any credit history for 1,000 off the bat, they seem to have gotten more cautious.

I stupidly paid the card off and closed it when I moved, looking back should have kept it open to maintain a credit history in the US.

mrken30

I had little credit score in the US, just the the couple of cards. I was a named user on my wife's card. Score of around 750 ish. I now have a score around 800. I have had the card 8 years. I have other cards with over 30k limit. Needless to say I don't use the card much as I easily spend over $2500 on fuel, food and bills.

Peronally I would recommend just getting a card with the bank you decide to go with initially if you have no options.

Guindalf

My advice, for what it's worth, is take whatever they offer!

Even if it's a $500 limit, it'll help you build credit by using it and paying it off. If nothing else, it increases the 'age of oldest account' column!

Just keep it ticking over and apply for more credit a couple of years down the road, when you'll at least have built up two years of credit history.

petitefrancaise

You won't be able to get even a secured card until you have your ssn. Once you have that then your bank will probably give you a secured credit card - the limit will depend upon how much cash you give them . If you use AIG Inbound then you can ask them to find you a company willing to give you an unsecured card and also Advancial have been good about giving non-secured cards to L1 holders.

Canveydave

Another thumbs up for Advancial.

I had $7,500 limit, before I had an SSN number, and was visiting on my ESTA. Applied remotely, picked it up on my reccie trip a month before we moved over.

mrken30

The other thing I just remembered about capitalone they don't allow you to overpay or keep a positive balance of more than 10% of the bill. It has been helpful on occasions to overpay on a card because I didn't have enough of a credit limit.