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We’re gonna say it, credit card applications are backwards.

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Quick Check™ helps set things straight.

Would you start a new series from the last episode? Would you brush your teeth before eating french onion soup? Would you wear sunglasses at night?

Applying for a credit card creates a “hard hit” (or hard inquiry) on your credit report — whether you’re approved or not. Hard hit, what? In a nutshell, these hits aren’t great and they can impact your credit score (read on for more details). So when you apply for a credit card, you’re guaranteed to get a hard hit on your credit file, but not necessarily a card at the end of the process. So wouldn’t it make more sense to know if you’d be approved for a card, before you applied?

With Quick Check – our free online credit card eligibility checker – you’ll know which Capital One cards you’ll be approved for with 100% certainty† so you can apply with confidence.

 Hard vs. soft hit. 

Back to those hard hits … When you apply for things like a credit card, loan or mortgage, a financial institution or lender will often look at your credit history, report and score to get a snapshot of your relationship with credit. They look out for things like whether you’ve made your payments on time, if you have a history of exceeding your credit limit, as well as the number and age of the credit accounts you have open.

This rather complex process of checking your history to make credit decisions (like approving or rejecting a loan application) is known as a hard inquiry (or hit). The hard hit can also have an impact on your credit score, which in turn, can influence your chances of getting approved for a credit card.

Soft hits or inquiries, on the other hand, don’t impact your credit score. These checks aren’t tied to a specific application for a credit product. Rather, they’re sometimes used to see if you’d qualify for certain credit offers.

When you use Quick Check, we request your report and credit score from a credit reporting agency to determine which credit cards you’ll be approved for, before you apply. This is an example of a soft hit and it gives you the confidence of knowing which cards you could get without risking rejection and impacting your credit score.


So if you’re thinking about applying for a Capital One Mastercard®, give Quick Check a try first. It’s easy, and you’ll get a response in seconds. 

     

     

† You can be 100% confident you’ll be approved when you apply, as long as:

  1. There’s been no change in your credit file information, personal information or financial status from the time you receive your Quick Check results to the time you apply for one of our credit cards;
  2. You’re at least the age of majority in the province or territory you live in;
  3. Your application isn’t flagged for fraud prevention;
  4. You don’t have an existing Capital One account; and
  5. You haven’t applied for a Capital One account in the last 30 days or had an account with us that was not in good standing in the last year. In good standing means not past due, over limit, fraudulent, restricted, or part of a consumer credit counselling program or bankruptcy.

In some cases, we may not be able to open an account for you even though your application was approved. This can happen if we’re unable to verify your identity, or you don’t provide the required security funds if you’re approved for a Secured Mastercard®.

Mastercard is a registered trademark, and the circles design is a trademark of Mastercard International Incorporated.