How To Get An Instant Credit Limit Increase With Citibank
There are a variety of reasons to get higher credit card limits, including improving your credit score by using a lower percentage of your available credit, and also the ability to get more free money from credit cards, and thus make more interest. Some people say there are disadvantages too, but it’s really easier to decrease your credit limits if somehow you need to.
Sometimes your issuer will automatically increase your limits without asking, like Citibank and MBNA. But many times you need to ask and it often involves a credit check. To be honest, I haven’t very aggressive recently in getting my credit limits as high as they could be. The only thing that I do, because it literally takes 5 seconds to do, is to occasionally request an instant credit limit increase online with Citibank. It doesn’t even hit you with a hard credit pull! Here’s how:
1) Log in your Citibank account
2) On the menu bar, go to Manage My Account > Credit Line Increase Request
3) After that, you’ll get one of two screens. Either you’ll be instantly approved or you’ll have to ask for a manual review.
a. Instantly Approved - Your account will be instantly analyzed and you’ll be offered a specific increase to your current credit limit. Here’s my results from my Citi Professional Card (click to enlarge):
I got an extra $1,000 to $10,000. Note that it clearly states no credit report was pulled. You can either accept, decline, or ask for a higher increase. Asking for a higher increase is the same as…
b. Manual Review - Here, in order to get a limit increase you’ll have to restate your income and even list some bank account information so they can check your balances. A hard credit pull is also required if you agree to a full review. If you decline then nothing happens.
You can usually get an “free” increase about once every six months. Being rejected usually means you asked already too recently. I usually just try whenever I remember, like today, since rejection does no harm. I’m currently collecting information about the other card issuers.
Find more in Credit Cards | 10/25/06, 11:27pm | Trackback
October 26th, 2006 at 1:26 am
Hey thanks! 2K to 10,200 for me. I knew of this option at Citibank, but thought it was done after a credit report review.
October 26th, 2006 at 4:51 am
In case anyone is wondering how a denial looks like at Citibank:
“We regret that we cannot approve your request for a Credit Line Increase at this time. Your request was processed by the credit record we have on file, as well as a credit scoring system, which assigns a numerical value to various items on your credit card account(s).”
As you can see, it says “credit record we have on file”.
It goes on to say:
“Our decision was based in whole or in part on information already on file with us from one of the consumer-reporting agencies listed below. You have a right under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to receive a free copy of your credit report if you request it within 60 days from the date of this notice. “
So it’s a good way to get a free copy of your credit report, if you have used all of your free ones already. I’m not how why you’re allowed to get another one if they didn’t pull a current one, but I am not complaining.
October 26th, 2006 at 6:45 am
As an aside, I called Citi about two weeks ago asking for them to move part of my credit line from one card to another so I would have more money for a zero balance transfer. To this day, no letter or movement of said credit. The account the credit line was being moved to is somewhat new but it has been in existence for over six months now. Now that I don’t really use my Cit Dividend card since they dropped the 5% back, I thought I would move part of the credit line elsewhere. What’s up with Citi on this?
October 26th, 2006 at 6:53 am
One caveat:
“Thank you for your request. Your account must be open for at least 6 months before we can consider granting a Credit Line Increase. You’ll receive written confirmation of this message within 7 to 10 business days. During this evaluation, a credit report was not pulled on your account. Thank you for using our website.”
October 26th, 2006 at 7:35 am
Yes, Citi does do soft credit pulls to check on your credit periodically, which don’t hurt your credit score. I didn’t know they actually gave out flat denials. Hmm.. maybe I should ask more often to try and get a free credit report.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:52 am
mc -
CitiCards reallocation doesn’t send you a written confirmation. It usually takes about a 1/2 hour after asking to do it on the phone for it to show up in your accounts online.
I would call back and ask them again to do the transfer.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:54 am
You would be able to get the credit report for free, but not the score.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:00 am
You can try the same thing at American Express as well. Although I’m not sure if they do a hard credit pull, but I’ve done it twice and my credit limit was increased instantly.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:23 am
In our experiences with Citi we have been able to get an increase about every 3 months.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Hi- Just curious, what is a good % to use as a standard for trying to improve your credit score? Thanks!!
October 26th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
BoA has the same option.
October 26th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Andrew, thanks for the info. They said it would be 24 hours as I called on a Sunday. I wasn’t in a rush. Will call back. Have done the same with Chase and it was near instantaneous. I am thinking they denied it as it would have allowed me to do a zero % balance transfer for a larger amount. They just didn’t tell me they didn’t want to do it for that reason? We shall see when I try again.
October 26th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
I swear I think of post ideas like two seconds after you do.
October 26th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Every time I try to use the credit limit increase option in AmEx recently, it says “We are currently upgrading our site to improve American Express Online Services. During this time you may experience intermittent system delays.”
Am I the only one? Or this their passive-aggressive way to say no?
October 26th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Jonathan, I get the same message from AmEx when I tried to increase the rate on my business card. My two personal cards, however, seem to go through without a problem. I’m not sure if this is just coincidence….
October 26th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
I have two Citi cards, both with about $13000 credit limits. However, when I clicked the credit increase request link, the page I got was always the same, asking me to provide income and banking information, not the instant approval page. Is it true that once your credit line reaches certain limits, the instant approval option is no longer available? Since I always got the same page with the information that I don’t want to provide, I never get an increase in this way.
October 26th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
BTW, I just logged into my AMEX account and it seems that the credit increase request link works fine. However, they also ask for additional information and there is no mention of whether they will pull my credit history. I didn’t continue with the request.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
I’ve increased my credit limit on my two American Express cards several times through their website, and there was no hard pull. Generally I either get a message that I’m pre-approved for $xx increase, or I’m prodded to put in additional information (maybe this would lead to a hard pull?) But I don’t recall getting your error message, maybe you should check with American Express.
October 27th, 2006 at 8:41 am
I tried this after reading the post, and Citi rejected my request, with the same type of wording as one of the other people on this site posted (”We regret that we cannot approve your request for a Credit Line Increase at this time. Your request….”). However, it seems I got a hard pull on my credit report! I’ve signed up for the Equifax credit alert via Paypal, and it alerted me to an ‘inquiry’
October 27th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
A note about Citibank and their soft pulls… About 2 months ago a (different) creditor incorrectly flagged an account as 120 past-due. This coincided with citibank’s update of my credit report on file and they slashed my limit from $10000 to $500 (understandably.) After getting the report corrected (no past dues at all) I called up citibank to have them take a look and they refused to re-check my file. I was told to wait 3 months for the system to update.
October 27th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
What about MBNA for credit limit increases?
October 28th, 2006 at 7:38 am
[…] MyMoneyBlog has a tip for getting an automatic credit line increase at CitiBank. […]
October 28th, 2006 at 7:50 am
mc -
They don’t care what the reason is, and I highly doubt moving it for BT purposes would raise any flags. I wasn’t asked, and I didn’t tell.
However, one rep, when I was calling in about 2 or 3 of my accounts, noticed that I wasn’t using a lot of my credit line and suggested that I move some over for BTs or lower % utilization on that account. So it can be done. Just make sure you clearly tell them you don’t want to close, but you want to “reallocate”.
October 28th, 2006 at 9:22 am
[…] How To Get An Instant Credit Limit Increase With Citibank @ MyMoneyBlog Related Posts: […]
October 28th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
I have received about 5 additional credit cards to get bonus rewards of various kinds in the early part of the year. Should I continue to hold them and not use them or slowly close them and get some new ones early next year?
October 28th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Just keep them open unless they have annual fees or another lender specifically asks you to close them. Otherwise there is little or no benefit to closing them.
October 29th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Is there any reason not to close them?
October 31st, 2006 at 6:49 pm
I’ve done this in the past. Thanks for the reminder! My results this time:
Citi: Instant increase of $2,000
American Express: Instant increase of $2,700
October 31st, 2006 at 8:19 pm
If I remember correctly, Citi will usually consider credit increases every 60 days on existing accounts, 6 months for new accounts.
Just got myself $1500 more from Citi.
November 16th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Great info! Just got my increase of $200.00 - I have horrible credit but this is one step in the right direction
March 8th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
after 6M of using citi I got a nice 30% increase for a student!
March 15th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Sun,
It is true that there are limits to the automatic increases. I reported 40,000 as income, and got increases every 3 months until I reached 16,000 limit. That was two years ago, since then no automatic increases for me. I guess the limit is 40%. As for AmEx, they got me increases up to $19,900 - I guess their limit is just under 50% of reported income.
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:21 pm
It does not do me any good since Citibank does not report my credit limit to any of the credit agencies. I have an AAdvantage Gold card with a 30000 limit, but it does not show up on my credit report. Does anyone know why? I cannot get a straight anwser from Citi.
May 5th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
After 6 months for college credit card. I got a 160% increase in Citi today!
well, I have a low starting credit line to begin with because this is my first credit card and I have no previous credit.
May 14th, 2007 at 1:15 am
The way you can get your new credit limit updated on your credit report is by calling your credit card company to send you a written approval of your new credit limit.
After that, send a copy of that letter to Experian, Equifax and TransUnion with your own letter asking them to update their records.
May 17th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Anybody had an experiences with Discover? I recently got the miles card at 0% with no fees for a year, and it’s the lowest limit card i’ve got.. interested in seeing if they’ll raise my limit yet, but not sure if i want to receive a hit on my credit report.
May 17th, 2007 at 10:51 am
For Discover you have to call in and make sure the person knows what you mean by “hard credit pull”. If they do ask for whatever credit limit increase is allowable without one.
May 17th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Here is what I got when I tried at citibank:
We have received your request for a credit line increase and have forwarded it to our Credit Department for review. You’ll receive a letter from us within 7-10 business days.
Thank you.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:41 am
I tried to request for an increase on my Amex Optima account but it asked specifically how much I would like to increase. Should I be greedy and does it hurt to ask for more?
May 26th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Since opening my AmEx card last August, I’ve been taking advantage of AmEx’s rather liberal credit limit increase policy (you can request an increase every billing period. My older WaMu visa would only allow an increase once every six months). When you make such a request, American Express asks for the desired credit limit increase, and also gathers information on yearly income. This month, I learned that a friend of mine (who has been reporting to AmEx income of $37,000) has been granted successive increases in her credit line, bringing her total line of credit to $35,000! Throwing caution to the wind, I logged in to the AmEx site and requested that they increase my limit from $16600 to $34000. To my amazement, the request was approved in less than 5 seconds. I am incredibly curious to see what kind of effect this will have on my credit score (I have a balance of about $6000).
July 4th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Just got approved for a citi flex line of credit $12500 from citi bank. I pulled my credit report from true credit and they are not reporting my credit limit only the amount of the check I wrote for 2000 . Im worried about the effect this will have on my credit scores as I have worked so hard the last two years raising them. I called them today and they told me there was no one I could talk to about it?? Should I just send a copy of the original letter they sent stating my credit limit to the 3 agencies?and ask them to update my report. I have a citi bank diamond preferred card and two citi finance cards from them and they report the credit line on all of those. Just totally confused as to why. any help would be greatly appreciated.
August 8th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
first of all, jonathan - love the site. Great ideas that i put to use every day. One quick question: I currently have a $12k credit line with Chase, but when I recently applied to citi (to take advantage of the 0% BT), they only approved me for an initial credit line of $2300. Is that normal? (I did just buy a car and am in a $14k/48 mo loan - I’m assuming this has something to do with it?).
any thoughts from anyone would be apprciated…
August 14th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Does anyone have any experience on what limits they give on the citibank flex line of credit. I got a pre-approved letter, but don’t want the inquiry on my file if they aren’t going to give me a substantial line of credit? Please, anyone out there had luck with this account?
August 15th, 2007 at 5:41 am
to update my previous post - I called when I got the card and asked for a credit line increase of 10k. They sent an email yesterday morning saying I was approved. Hooray! Free Money : )
August 17th, 2007 at 10:39 am
it is important to note that the banks are getting more rigid in their approvals.
August 24th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I just tried this today with my AmEx account. At first I thought about being cautious but figured I’d try what it seems many others have an voila! My credit limit was doubled. Though it’s still about a third of my yearly income, I’m curious to see if I can pull this stunt again in a month or two…
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:00 am
Citi flex line is really good, but their reporting to the credit bureaus makes it appear as though you are maxed out, even though you might have a $15000 line, and only owe them $2000.00. This lowers your credit score. Don’t waste your time or credit score with Discover since their lines are so low, it isn’t worth while.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
I have a 23k credit card with citi, and just got a 12k citi flex line of credit.
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:40 am
I have about $25,000 available from Citi, I often consider borrowing about half to do 0% and collect interest. If I lost my job (not expecting that, but hey) I could use this as an emergency fund until I found another and after 6 months I would sell my house to pay it back…
25000 would easily cover about 1 year of expenses for me, but 6 months in I would get concerned…
October 26th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
i have a 10 k limit from my BoA amex card, 5500 on citi(these 1 i use rarely) .But on another new citi diamond prefered card I just got a limit of 1800.I always get notification that my new account is not 6 months old. How much limit can I get on the new card in 6 months.Because I dont have much use of a low limit card
October 29th, 2007 at 11:07 am
I requested cli through the form online. 2.5k to 10k. 4 month old account. hehe, great for me.
hard pull EQ.
fico 730.
November 17th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Just a note. They do a hard pull now it seems. Maybe that changed since this blog entry was originally posted.
At the bottom of the CLI request it says:
‘By submitting this form you authorize Citibank (South Dakota) to check your credit history.’
November 19th, 2007 at 12:42 am
I didn’t know it was so easy to do. I did this today and was automatically approved for a credit increase of 1,500. So from 6,000 to 7,500.
Sweet.
November 27th, 2007 at 8:21 am
hey, thanks…
i received a card from wamu for 1000$. but i cancelled it and did what u said with citi bank. i got a 2000$ raise..(ofcourse its not 0% APR) but still i prefer to stick to citi bank fellas. they understand us…
November 27th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
I requested for increase in credit line on my citi card. limit is raise from 1800 to 8000 straight. hard pull required .equifax
December 12th, 2007 at 8:19 am
I wanted to do an online credit increase with my AMEX Blue…I have been a member with them since 1999, but they have never increased my credit automatically…Perfect credit history.
i have a 5700 line, how often can u request a CLI online..every billing period or every few months?
Regards, Sam
December 12th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Yes, go for it! You’re due an increase. Call them up on phone rather than on-line if you don’t want a hard inquiry on credit report, and ask them if they can check to see if you are eligible without a hard pull and they will tell you within 30 seconds.
December 19th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
ptiemann is right, I tried at Citi and they gave me a form to fill out online. Either they do this for everyone or they don’t find me workthy of a soft-pull credit line increase :/
December 21st, 2007 at 5:13 pm
I just increased my citi $2,100 with no hard pull on it, got approved within seconds. I believe you can increase your citi every 3 months under 2,000 with soft pull. I just open Amex last month and the initial was $1,200, no APR and no annual fee for a year, but starting point was low because they are not making money on the first year. I asked the rep. to increase the limit and he replied that i have to wait about a month for a request. I read the post and pple being making ridicules increase on Amex i guess i will try it out next month or so, i am pretty sure they will do a hard pull on my credit score..
July 8th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Thanks, It worked for me.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:41 am
CitiBank Changed the website design this month and this option no longer shows up in their menu structure. I was able to take advantage of automatic increase of $1800 before it was gone though. If anyone finds it on Citi Card’s website, please let us know. Thanks!
August 1st, 2008 at 3:36 am
Same as SanDance, the website design has changed and now the option is gone.
August 30th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Since the CLI option is not available on the new citicards website, I called the citicards customer service number to find out about the a CLI w/o a hard credit inquiry.
The rep. put me on hold for a few secs and came back with an instant $2500 increase for me … specifically stating that “we did not check your credit report for this”.
Just to make sure that “no credit inquiry was done” I requested him to note this down on my account (in case I see a discrepancy later on) and also send me a confirmation letter stating this, which he is sending out.
He also mentioned that the CLI option will be back on the website in a couple of months… the current situation is temporary.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
^Hey thanks. I was wondering about that.