Late Visa Payment

[pea12]

Hi All, I hope you can help me.  I opened my visa statement this morning to find out my payment from last month overlapped by one day, hence an arrears charge.   Spoken to the visa company and they wont remove the charge, however thats not my main concern.  I am worried this will go against me in my credit files/references?  Please can somebody advise if it will or not.  I am normally a late payer, this is the first time.    Also, do credit checks go by direct debits you may have set up on Mortgages/Utility bills etc?  Or are they just purely loands/visa cards etc?   Never ever had a problem with my direct debits, it was just a question I am asking out of interest about how its all worked out.   Thank you in advance.........any help welcome!

[Loosehead]

Everything that is credit from Mortages to store cards will be recorded by the credit reference agencies, Experian and Equifax. They both use a similar system for example there will be a record for all you borrowings, they are structured to record your payment history in what ever periods you pay, usually monthly. For example if you pay your visa on time for the last 12 months it will show as

000000000000 - each 0 is 1 month

Now if you miss a payment completely for a month it will look like this

000000000200 - the 2 means a missed payemnt three months ago.

Now in your case you where late so it will be:

000000000010 - the 1 means late in that month

Obviously a credit scan that is all 0's is better and one that contains a 2 is likely to get a refusal. Generally it will take two or more 1's to get a refusal, so to answer you original question, yes it will go on your record but you'll prbably be tolerated for this minor indescretion.

Pedants, I used 0,1 and 2 to illustrate the general principle but I'm not 100% sure that they are the actual digits used but you get the idea. I was using 1 year as an illustration I know that they go back further.

[Oneeyedvic]

Completely agree with above EXCEPT:

not all store cards / mortgages etc provide info to Experian  & Equifax - in my experience (and I see around 21 searches a day as a non prime funder)

To give you an indication only around 40% of mortgages show up on the searches.

This is why we (as a non prime funder) will always ask for bank statements too - this will show us any direct debits to companies not on searches.

In my experience, Experian holds far more data than Equifax - in fact on a search that I have on my desk now, there are 32 pieces of CAIS information (the zeroes referred to by Loosehead) from Experian and only 5 for Equifax.

(And if you want to be pedantic Loosehead you can't have 000020000, but would have to have 000012000 etc)

[Oneeyedvic]

Oh, forgot to mention - if it is only one day late, in all proabability it won't actually show as one month down unless you are really unlucky - it all depends on when the company in question uploads their data to Experian/Equifax (if indeed they do). It will only show one month down if the amount is still outstanding when they upload their data.

Hope I haven't confused you too much.

[Loosehead]

"(If you want to be pedantic......."

I don't want to be pedantic Vic I though I made that clear. I was only trying to illustrate the system, I did'nt think I would get it exactly right so I thought I'd pre-empt the corrections.

[pea12]

thanks to both of you for your help and examples, and taking the time to explain.....