Chime Credit Builder Review: A Free Secured Card Option

Chime is a fintech company that offers banking services through partnerships with The Bancorp Bank and Stride Bank. It offers a checking account, a savings account, and a credit builder card.

The credit builder card is a secured credit card that operates like a pre-paid debit card. Your security deposit is your spending limit, but as you spend on the card, the limit decreases. The payment is then made with the security deposit; you don’t need to send additional funds to pay the bill.

Your on-time payment is then reported to all three credit bureaus.

At a Glance

• Secured credit card with no fees or interest
• Reports to all three credit bureaus
• Monthly payment is made directly from the security deposit

Who Should Use the Chime Credit Builder Card?

Chime Credit Builder is great for someone who needs to build or improve their credit and can’t afford to put down a security deposit on a traditional credit card. The Credit Builder card uses your security deposit to make the payment, so you don’t have to come up with both a security deposit AND a payment.

Monthly fee	$0	$0	$20 per month, or $149 annually
Links directly to checking	No	Yes	Yes
Reports to all three bureaus	Yes	Yes	Experian and Equifax only
	Learn more	Learn more	Learn more

What is the Chime Credit Builder Card?

The Chime Credit Builder card is a secured Visa credit card that you can get without a credit check. It’s a secured credit card, but it works more like a pre-paid debit card than it does a credit card.

There are no monthly fees or interest. You must pay the full balance by the due date, and your on-time payments are reported to all three credit bureaus.

How the Chime Credit Builder Card Works

When you open a Chime Credit Builder account, you get a secured card tied to a Credit Builder Secured Account. You need to transfer funds into that secured account, either through automatic transfers or manually, and the balance is how much you can spend with your card. As you make purchases, the amount you have available to spend decreases.

If you turn on “Safer Credit Building,” Chime will automatically pay your monthly balance using the secured funds (it’s basically autopay). If you don’t turn it on, you must do it manually.

Go to Chime

How Chime Credit Builder Builds Credit

It is a credit card, so Chime will report your payments to all three credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. It works just like every other secured credit card, which is what many Americans use to build or rebuild their credit history.

The Chime Credit Builder Card doesn’t have a pre-set limit but is limited by the amount you put into your secured account. Chime doesn’t report utilization so it won’t impact your score in that regard. It will report your payment behavior and on-time payments, which are important to your credit score.

Chime Credit Builder Pricing

The Chime Credit Builder card has no annual fee and charges no interest. The only requirement is that you have a Chime Spending Account, which also has no monthly or account maintenance fees.

Other Chime Accounts

In addition to the Credit Builder card, Chime also offers a spending account and a savings account.

Spending Account

The Chime Spending Account has no monthly fee or minimum balance requirement. It’s similar to a checking account, though it has added benefits like the ability to round up transactions into your savings (if you charge $1.50, they will transfer 50 cents from your spending to your savings account).

You can also get your direct deposit up to two days early and no overdraft fees. In fact, you can get up to $200 in overdraft protection with Chime’s SpotMe® feature.

Here’s our full review of the Chime Spending Account.

Savings Account

The Chime Savings Account has no monthly fees and earns 2.00% APY. This is not as high as you would get at a top high-yield savings account, but it’s a decent interest rate if the account is convenient for you.

Go to Chime

Chime Credit Builder Alternatives

You can always turn towards secured credit cards but they often require a large, several hundred dollar, security deposit. If you have no history, you can always try a low limit store branded credit card.

If you’re looking for an all in one banking services provider that has a Spending account, Saving account, and Credit Builder product – I’m not sure there’s a perfect alternative out there.

Here are a few similar ones that offer the ability to build credit:

Varo Money

Varo’s Believe card works the same way that Chime Credit Builder’s card does. Move money to the card which becomes your available balance. As you spend, your available balance decreases and then your security deposit is used to pay the bill in full on the due date. You can manually pay the bill or you can turn on SafePay and the bill will be paid automatically.

Here is our full review of Varo Money.

Go to Varo Money

Kikoff

Kikoff works slightly differently in that the secured credit card is how you access your checking account. It’s the same concept as both Chime Credit Builder and Varo Money, but you don’t have a separate credit-building account.

With Kikoff, the money in your Kikoff spending account is your available balance and as you spend, your available balance goes down and the money is set aside to pay the credit card bill on the due date.

You certainly could keep a separate checking account at another bank and use the Kikoff account simply as a secured card, but you don’t have to.

Here’s our full review of Kikoff.

Go to Kikoff

Extra just offers a debit card that links to your existing bank, through Plaid, with a spending limit based on your bank’s account balance. You use the debit card and then a day later, they pay off the transactions with the money in your checking account.

They report your payments to Equifax and Experian at the end of each month. The monthly fee starts at $20 a month.

Our full review of Extra Debit Card has more.

Go to Extra Debit Card

Is Chime Credit Builder Worth It?

If you are looking to build credit and can’t seem to get approved for a traditional credit card, I think this is a very good option. This review focused on the Credit Builder card but our Chime review discussed their Spending and Savings accounts, which are also pretty good if you’re looking for a new bank.

Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by The Bancorp Bank, N.A. or Stride Bank, N.A., Members FDIC. The Chime Visa® Debit Card is issued by The Bancorp Bank or Stride Bank pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. and may be used everywhere Visa debit cards are accepted. Please see back of your Card for its issuing bank.

*****Credit Builder Accounts & Certificates of Deposit made/held by Lead Bank, Sunrise Banks, N.A., First Century Bank, N.A., each Member FDIC. Subject to credit approval.