18 Things Everybody Should Know About Wells Fargo Credit Cards

Wells Fargo didn’t used to be a big player in the credit card space, then they introduced their 5x cards and the Propel series and have been steadily getting more popular. They are quite strange when it comes to credit cards, so read this before you think about applying for one of their cards.

The List

1. Wells Fargo usually want you to have an existing relationship with them before approving you for a credit card. The easiest way to get a relationship with them is to set up a checking account with them, you can currently get a $100 bonus for setting one of those up.
2. Wells Fargo won’t normally approve you if you’re not a permanent resident. Not sure why, but another one of their quirks.
3. If you’re denied for a Wells Fargo card, call their reconsideration department. It’s not the easiest card issuer to turn a denial into an approval, but still worth a try (especially if you’ve followed #1 & #2). Tips for dealing with reconsideration departments can be found here.
4. Wells Fargo cards are churnable, we have at least a few data points this is the case. They don’t have a lot of cards worth signing up for, so the fact you can get the bonus more than once is great.
5. They will merge multiple inquiries if made on the same day. Although it’s usually difficult to get approved for two cards on the same day anyway.
6. There isn’t a hard limit on the number of Wells Fargo credit cards you can have.
7. They do not offer a referral program. Referral programs seem to be more and more out of favor with credit card issuers, probably due to compliance issues.
8. Wells Fargo has now added a pre-qualified checker.
9. Wells Fargo allows you to request a credit limit increase. I’d recommend doing this by phone and finding out if it’s a hard or soft pull before doing it, as there have been mixed reports in the past.
10. Reallocating credit limits with Wells Fargo is unfortunately always a hard credit pull.
11. Wells Fargo doesn’t do a true product change, instead they close your existing card and open the new card. In essence this means no hard pull is done, but you don’t keep your account history/age when doing a product change
12. As far as I know, they don’t offer any type of retention bonus for cards with an annual fee.
13. Wells Fargo reports your statement balance as your credit used to the credit reporting agencies. Credit utilization is one of the major scoring factors for the FICO score, so make sure to pay large balances before your statement closes.
14. Wells Fargo lets you change your statement closing date by calling in. Might be useful with the above information (e.g if your pay falls at a certain time and you want to pay off your card before the statement closes).
15. For minimum spending requirements, the time you have to reach that requirement is based on card approval and calendar months. (more recent DP says you have 95 days)
16. Wells Fargo says that they don’t report balances from business credit cards to the credit bureaus which is useful for keeping your credit report cleaner.
17. You can check your credit card’s application status online.
18. If you’ve opened a Wells Fargo card in the last 6 months, you can’t get the sign up bonus on another card. It’s important to note you can get one personal and one business per 6 months.

Things We’re Aren’t Sure About

• We don’t know if Wells Fargo will match a higher sign up bonus. Probably because their bonuses are static, I’ve never seen an increased offer from them.
• If they offer expedited shipping on new cards or not.
• We don’t know what their annual fee waiver policy is.
• We don’t know if they will approve you for a credit card if you have a frozen report with them.
• We don’t know if you can get your points/cash back expedited.
• We don’t know if they will issue an instant credit card number.
• We aren’t sure if they adjust auto-payments if you make a partial of full payment.

Final Thoughts

This is our last post in this series, we’ve now covered all the major credit card issuers. If you’d like to see similar information about smaller credit card issuers or you know some information we’ve listed above that we aren’t sure about then please let us know in the comments below. If you’d like to discuss any of these, don’t refer to them as their numbers as these sometimes change. You can view other posts in this series by clicking the links below.

• American Express
• Bank of America
• Capital One
• Chase
• Citi
• Discover
• US Bank