What Day Does American Express Report To The Credit Bureaus?

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, [email protected]

American Express reports your payments and balances to the major credit reporting bureaus once per month, on the last day of your card’s billing cycle. To know exactly the day of the month your card’s information was reported, you’d have to know when the last day of the billing cycle is for your card.

You can find the last day of your billing cycle listed either on your paper statement or online when you log in to your American Express account. For example, in the picture below, you can see that this card had billing periods that ended on either the 9th or 10th of each month. Information about the account would have been reported on July 10, August 10, September 9, October 9, November 9, and December 10.

Reporting Date is Different for Each Card

Note that American Express is going to report to the major credit reporting bureaus — Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax — on the last day of the billing period for that specific card. If you have a second American Express card, it could have a different billing period that ends on a different date, so the reporting date on the second card would also be different.

This makes sense, because if American Express reported every single credit card on the exact same date each month, it would be a massive job to get millions of accounts reported all at once. And, even if they could, the credit bureaus would probably not be able to actually record all of this information at the same time. (Not to mention all of the information coming into the credit reporting agencies from other credit card issuers!)

Why Don’t I See It On My Credit Report?

While American Express may report your card information on the last day of the billing cycle each month, it’s possible that the credit reporting agencies won’t immediately have that information available on your credit report. It may take a day or two before you actually can see the data on your credit report. In addition, if your billing period were to end on a bank holiday, it would be reported a day or two late, which would then delay the updating of your credit report.

But, bottom line, American Express reports to the major credit bureaus on the last day of a card’s billing cycle, and you should be able to see that information reflected in your credit report shortly thereafter.