American Express made a change to their system so that after making a payment in the online login or app your balance and available credit is updated instantly, even before they’ve fully processed the payment from your bank. This is true for both personal and small business cards.
I love this new feature – previously only Citi instantly updated your balance at time of payment. Someone mentions that Capital One just made a change to process payments instantly as well; if anyone can confirm, please let us know.
This helps for a few things:
- Instantly frees up your credit line.
- Psychologically, I like seeing the payment documented there as a line item in my transactions right away and seeing my balance as $0 right away. It also helps avoid double paying the same bill (though they always had a message there to try avoiding that).
- It might help with credit reports that if you make a payment right before statement close the balance might not show on your credit report, whereas with other issues it might show since the actual time of payment isn’t until a day or two later.
Hat tip to Jaybeltran805
