“You can add your child as a certified user and help them establish a good credit history.” That’s general advice – and that’s not wrong. Assuming you have a good credit history for yourself, assuming you have a perfect credit habit, you can give your child a credit boost by adding it to your credit card account.
As they say, however, the devil is in detail.
Certainly you can When he is a toddler, add a junior to your card, but is that helping him? Or could it open the door to fraud without giving him real benefits? Do you seed an enviable credit history that will help him secure his trust as an adult? Or is he introducing the complex concept of money early before he is old enough to understand and participate?
Add your child as an approved user at the right time and explain how your decision will affect both quickly and in the future.
When do children start building their credit history?
Something will trigger the beginning of your credit history – it will not magically realize your 18th birthday. In fact, according to a 2022 Experian report, around 28 million Americans lack a traditional credit history.
“Credit cards are usually one of the most common forms of accounts we see (to start a credit history),” said Margaret Poe, director of consumer credit education at Transunion, one of the three main credit bureaus. “Student loans are often early accounts of people’s credit reports.”
These are typical accounts for adults, but there are several reasons why your child may have credit files.
Being added as an authorized user to a parent’s credit card is a normal and useful activity that starts a child’s credit history. “Usually, children don’t have credits. They don’t have any kind of credit accounts, so they don’t have any kind of credit history,” explains Poe.
But that’s not the only way children find themselves in their credit history long before they needed them.
One of the main reasons a child may have a credit history is because they are victims of fraud.
– Margaret Poe
Transunion’s Director of Consumer Credit Education
According to a 2024 report by Javelin Strategy & Research, one in 19 people have been a victim of identity fraud in the past six years, and one in 116 have been affected within the past year.
You can help prevent fraud against your children by freezing their trust. This brings us to another common initial report in a child’s credit history. Although it is frozen, freezing your credit file will start your credit file.
“(Consumer Freeze) is a great tool out there,” Poe says. “It’s a good resource for the family.”
Poe explained that once frozen, the child’s trust will remain frozen until someone provides the necessary documents to remove it. Parents can make those decisions for their children. Alternatively, you can request that your credit be frozen or frozen when your child turns 16.
When will your child get a credit score?
The simple answer is that it is not. Just because your child has a credit history doesn’t mean he has a credit score. They are simply not old enough.
“The child doesn’t have a credit score until he is 18,” says Andrada Pacheco, executive vice president and chief data scientist at VantagesCore. She is because even children with credit history do not have a score until the user is allowed on their parents’ cards or reach 18 for other reasons.
Once they become adults, it can take some time for their credit scores to be generated. To get a score, you need a certain amount of information in your credit file. VantagesCore can often generate scores within a month of a qualified account being added to a file, but it may take six months of activity to generate a FICO score.
For young adults added as certified users, they can benefit from the long credit history of their parents that helps them fill their files, but that assumes that the issuing bank reports the activity of the authorized users and not all of them. Most major banks report certified user activities, including Capital One, Bank of America, and Discover. Some, such as American Express and Chase, only report activity for certified users over the age of 18. If that is important to your plan, check directly with the publisher, whether you want to report certified user activity or not.
Why you want to add young children as certified users?
Junior doesn’t have a credit score until he is 18, but that doesn’t mean you can’t add him as a certified user to your credit card now.
Assuming that the bank allows younger certified users, some people don’t have an age limit, while others require that the certified users be 13 or older, but there’s no problem with adding children when heading to kindergarten. Perhaps you see it as an item to check from the list, so it will be done when it’s time for your child to start using the card. Alternatively, your child may be old enough to start understanding credit cards and budgets. This is a lesson in financial literacy for them.
In either case, know that adding them at age 6 and adding at age 16 will ultimately not affect the credit history boost you are giving.
For example, you have a 20-year-old credit account. Adding my 10-year-old son as a certified user today, his credit file shows 20 years of credit history. I wait and add my son to my account when he turns 16 and he has a 26-year credit history. In any case, when he turns 18, his credit score should benefit from my 28-year-old credit card in his credit history, assuming that my credit history is sufficient to make his files scoutable. And yes, that means his credit history will be older than him, but that will not affect him.
“When my daughter turned 16, I did it myself for her – just two years ago,” Pasiko said.
According to Pacheco, the average VantagesCore 4.0 for 18 years old was 652, which was considered “close prime” as of February 2025. An 18-year-old child, a licensed user with a credit card account, has one point advantage over those who do not. That one point may not sound much, but VantagesCore considers a 661-780 score as “prime” and moving it to that bracket could make a big difference in terms of credit and approval. In other words, at this stage of a person’s trust journey, all points can make a difference.
However, with Pacheco, adding children as certified users is also about boosting their scores in the future for educational opportunities.
“The advice is to wait until your child is fully responsible for actually handling himself,” Pacheco says. “It’s a great educational tool, it’s important that they understand what credit is and understand that it’s important to use their credit responsibly.
“Show them a statement,” she advises. “‘These are my fees. These are your fees. If you have a budget for a month, what do you need to do to manage this and what do you need to think about?”
You may want to wait to add a child as a certified user
Your child is not aware of the benefits of an additional credit score from being added as a certified user before turning 18, so you have the freedom to wait for a decision to make. And there’s a good reason to wait.
Perhaps most importantly, adding a child as a certified user creates a credit file. Certainly, that’s what you want in the end, but when they’re very young, you may just be creating opportunities for fraud.
A 2024 Javelin survey found that one in eight children exposed their identity in data breaches over the past six years, and one in 43 had proven personally identifiable information in data breaches within the past year.
“If there is a violation, the information (of your child) is there,” says Pacheco, adding that she doesn’t see any benefits in adding your child before your child is old enough to use the card or understand responsibility.
In fact, Pacheco and Poe agree that there is an educational aspect to adding a child as a certified user, and it may be helpful to wait until they are old enough to participate in the decision.
“If you were in the window for a few years between 16-18 (years), it’s time to start thinking about it,” advises Poe. “If you first think about where you are now, then you think about what their needs are from a child’s credibility perspective, and you have to call for judgement on when to start the process.”
Finally, authorized credit card users are financially responsible. You are on the hook to purchase your authorized users, including your children, as the primary cardholder. Of course, you don’t need to give your child a card on the day they become a certified user, but when the day comes, you’re ready to manage the fees they may decide to make.
The child must be old enough to understand what is going on. Credit, responsibility. ”
-Andrada Pacheco
VantagesCore, Executive Vice President and Chief Data Scientist
Conclusion
Assuming the bank allows it, there’s nothing to prevent them from adding your child as your child as a certified user when they’re pretty young. That long credit history is waiting for them when they turn 18 and should boost their score. Additionally, you can use this as an educational activity to learn how to manage your credits.
However, adding young children to your credit card has several drawbacks. This means that by creating unwanted credit files, you may be able to meet the risk of data breaches and fraud. Plus, if you do them too early, you can miss out on a natural opportunity to tell them about what you did and the responsibilities that entail.
Finally, when It depends on each parent. However, experts agree that adding them from mid to late is the recommended time for maximum credit score benefits and age-appropriate personal finance education opportunities.
