About Us
Get the latest credit tips & advice from our hand-picked team of credit experts. Each of them has been in your shoes and can provide you with first hand knowledge on how to take control of your credit.

• Baby Boomers
• Celebs & Credit
• Credit Bloopers
• Credit Nightmares
• Credit Tips
• Married with Children
• Newlyweds
• Recent College Grads
• Retirement
• Starting Out

• Henry B.
• Gene M.
• Sophie H.
• Michael S.
• Desiree B.
• Allie P.
• Lisa N.
• Sally S.
• Andy B.
• Meredith K.

What is Instant Approval? Posted by: Gene M. | Mar 19,2008

Print E-mail Del.icio.us Digg

You might have seen a number of credit card offers that offer instant approval.  Heck, you can see it right here, over on the right side of the page: the ad for, you guessed it, InstantApprovals.com.  But what is it?  Is it the same thing as being pre-approved for a credit card? Instant approval is a magical process in which the CD burner on your harddrive automatically prints a new credit card that you can use immediately.  Not really – maybe in another 100 years.  Actually, instant approval is an online process in which the credit card company approves your application right away.  With mail-in credit card applications, and even other online applications, you need to wait for the approval process to be completed. Often, once this approval process is finished, you may be awarded a totally different card than the one you applied for.  Suppose, for example, that you have a bottomed-out credit rating and you apply for a low-interest card only available to those with excellent credit.  You may think you’ll be able to beat the system, but this isn’t the case.  Instead of offering you the low-interest credit card, you’ll instead be given a totally different credit card with higher interest.  What would make a lot more sense would be to apply directly for a credit card in your credit rating and income bracket.  If you leave the decision up to the card company, you may be offered a worse card than if you sought out a good deal yourself.   This is where instant approval credit cards come in.  There is no lag between the application and being offered a card.  You’ll know exactly the card you’re getting right away.  How’s this so?  The way that the application is handled.  Instead of the credit card company making the decision of what credit card to issue, the instant approval process narrows down your choices based on your credit rating, income, and other factors.  You can potentially get the best possible card for your credit bracket.  Comments Name: Email:  do not notifynotify Website: Title: Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.