Update 6/19/24: Now applies to business cards as well. Hat tip to Cardright
(Update 11/21/22: Official press release today)
American Express recently began showing some people an ‘Apply With Confidence’ feature whereby you’re told before the final application whether you’ll be approved. After assuring card approval, you’ll then give Amex the go-ahead to pull the necessary credit report. This way, you’ll only swallow the hard credit ding with the confidence of card approval. Apple card has a similar feature as well.
Honestly Amex usually doesn’t pull the credit for someone who is an existing Amex customer which makes this feature irrelevant for most of us. Interesting feature nonetheless. Just note that this feature does not show for everyone, you’ll see on the original card application whether it’s an option for you.
I first learned about this feature today from a OMAAT post and it looks like it’s been around for a few months when it’s discussed on MyFico and Reddit.
A big lie. I was told approved, score>800, then denied on formal application because I had more APPLICATIONS to all places in the last two years {7} than their limit. Of course one more was added to my misdeeds.
Good luck, Do not trust Amex anymore!… Signed up for a card that I’ve never had, approved instantly on their site. I paid the annual fee and did my spend… They told me that I wouldn’t be getting my reward points?.. they said although I’ve never had that card but it’s in a family of other cards that I received a bonus on??? WTF yeah, a bunch of BS!! Filed a CFPB complaint on them. To no avail.
Confident by being put in Pop-Up-Jail
CONfidence. I see…..
Tried the precheck, got back”Offer Selected for You.” Which should mean getting approval. Credit score>800, OK for income. No special factors. Then got denied. With hard pull showing for years ahead. Which will also mean it will be harder to get an AMEX based on number of applications on file. Nasty.
Recon?
Seems like they are formalizing something that was already possible, you could always check if you were going to be approved or not by reading the message at the top of the application page, if it said something like “applying to expand your membership is easy” it would be a normal application that could be approved or denied, but if you were going to be approved the sentence would straight up tell you that you are pre-approved and I’ve never seen that message be wrong before. Amex does regular soft checks on everyone and mostly uses those soft checks for approvals, which is why they don’t even bother pulling credit for existing customers.
The only feature what I got from Amex is “Popup of Death”
Does anyone know if, just before applying for an Amex card, it helps your approval odds to make a payment on your existing Amex cards? So, for example, you apply after your statement date but before your payment date. Does Amex look at your current balance?
As far as I can tell, if you are an existing customer, Amex uses the monthly Experian soft check which you can check for yourself by going to your account page and then profile (there is a link to the FICO score there). It’s updated once a month and if you are a customer it uses that soft check for your approval, even if it’s been a few weeks. I’m pretty certain of this because there’s a way to check your pre-approvals on Amex and those pre-approvals update exactly on the day that Experian FICO check updates. So the best thing to do is look at what date Amex does your monthly Experian soft pull and make sure your credit is as high as possible on that day (by pre-paying all your cards minus 1 to get your utilization down, etc).
Does this work with business cards also?
If I am understanding this correctly, you can apply and you’ll be informed if you’re approved (or not approved) before final submission, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get the bonus if you’ve already had the card before, right?
Since they usually don’t do hard pull for existing customers so is this good for new Amex customers only?
Right and right
No, it’s also good for current AmEx cardholders because it gives you a way of knowing if you could get a card without being committed to apply for and receive it now.