Credit Karma is a free credit monitoring service that provides it’s users with access to their VantageScore (version 3) and access to their full credit report. In the past this data has all been based on the users TransUnion credit report, today Credit Karma announced that it’s users would also be able to access this information based on their Equifax credit report as well. This upgrade is being rolled out now to all 30 million users of the free service.
[Read: Our Credit Karma In Depth Review]
The pressure has been on these free credit monitoring services recently, with a raft of credit card issuers deciding to offer free FICO scores to their cardholders under the FICO Open Acess program. In July Credit Karma announced that it’s users would have access to their full TransUnion credit report for free, competitor Credit Sesame launched a free identity theft insurance service back in April as well and a generous referral program in October.
This announcement by Credit Karma will put considerable pressure on competitor Quizzle to provide more value, as they also offer users access to their VantageScore powered by Equifax data and two free Equifax reports per year.
Final Thoughts
This is a great change by Credit Karma, TransUnion is probably the least used credit bureau in the United States. It’s still a shame that they aren’t providing their users with a FICO score, as that is the most commonly used score by lenders (although there are multiple types of FICO scores).
As more and more lenders offer FICO scores for free, what these free sites offer will need to increase in order to stay competitive. Credit Karma has a massive leg up on their competitors (Credit.com, WisePiggy, Quizzle & Credit Sesame) due to their larger user base and the fact they’ve raised over $193 million in capital over 5 funding rounds (Google Capital invested in their last two funding rounds).
The founder of Credit Karma, Ken Lin also stated that “…landscaped has changed enough for us to take a second look in 2015” when asked about the service operating in Canada. Which would be an interesting development given the fact that there are no free credit monitoring services there at the moment.
Consumers should also remember that they can get access to all three of their credit reports from TransUnion, Equifax & Experian for free once per year at the website http://annualcreditreport.com/.
Has anyone seen Equifax on CreditKarma accounts yet?
Equifax has been horrible to me for all things electronic and keeps asking me phony verification questions that don’t belong to me. Quizzle and Mint.com Equifax scores have been a complete no go because of that and the thing is the annual credit report is correct so Equifax refuses to even acknowledge anything is even wrong. I’m hoping CreditKarma will be different but I won’t be surprised if Equifax messes this up too.
I think it’s a staggered roll out, but could be wrong. You should be able to see it within the next month. Let me know if you have issues with it and I’ll get in touch with CK on your behalf.
It depends on where you live. Here in PA, TU gets pulled all the time by nearly every bank: Chase, Citi, Barclay’s, US Bank… The only time I get an EQ pull is by a credit union.