WisePiggy is similar to the other free credit monitoring sites currently on the market, it provides users with a free credit score & credit monitoring as an incentive to join the site. They make their money by selling their users financial products that they receive a commission on (e.g credit cards, mortgage refinancing etc). They’ve been around for awhile (click here for a press release from back in 2008) but their free credit score offering looks to be new.
Free Credit Score
All of their information is provided by the TransUnion credit bureau. Which is the same information that Credit Karma relies on for their free credit score offering.
Is It Really Free
WisePiggy doesn’t look to require any credit card information to sign up, but it is important to remember that they make their money by selling you financial products. I didn’t personally sign up for this service, so I can’t confirm whether a credit card is required at any stage and if there are any other hidden gotchas.
Is It Accurate?
According to Wikipedia this site provides consumers access to their VantageScore, which is again the same scoring model used by Credit Karma. It’s important to note that the majority of lenders do not use VantageScore (which was created by the three major consumer credit reporting agencies), they instead use the FICO score (which is the most commonly used score).
We compared the VantageScore with FICO score and there was a sizable difference of 75 points between the two. This is because the scores have a different scoring algorithm and weighting factors. One nice thing that WisePiggy seems to offer is their credit report card which gives you your credit card utilization and average age of accounts as shown below.
Credit Tools
WisePiggy’s credit tools are fairly limited. They offer a debt calculator which will show you how much money you’ll save if you switch credit cards (to something with a lower APR). You should be avoiding carrying a balance regardless of the APR that’s offered on the card (unless it’s a 0% APR card), but this tool also fails to mention any balance transfer fees.
They’ll also recommend refinancing your homeloan/other debts if they think they can find you a better rate. This is semi-useful, but it’s important to remember that this is how they make the bulk of their money and as such may be inclined to recommend products that offer the highest commission rather than the best deal. If you do decide to refinance, it’s important you do your own independent research to find the best deal for you. Local credit unions will usually offer the best rates to their members.
The credit score card also gives you tips on how to improve your credit score, but these are basic (e.g lower your utilization, pay accounts on time etc) that you will have held before.
Our final thoughts
WisePiggy doesn’t offer anything that existing credit monitoring sites offer. It offers the same credit score that is used by Credit Karma and even uses the same scoring model. It looks to be owned & run by Quinnstreet which is a massive internet marketing company (334 million in revenue).
At this stage I will not be signing up for WisePiggy, as mentioned they don’t offer anything not currently offered on the market. If they offered a real FICO score, useful credit tools or credit monitoring on all three bureaus my opinion might change. It’ll be interesting to see how much money & effort Quinnstreet put into developing WisePiggy.
If you’re looking for other free credit monitoring sites, consider one of the below:
- Quizzle – Equifax data
- Credit Sesame – Experian data
- Credit Karma – TransUnion data
- Credit.com – Experian data
Not too familiar with wisepiggy so I looked at their website and it looks like they just use credit score and reports from Credit Sesame
I literally never got an activation email from them!