With the launch of CreditWise, Capital One is the first major bank to offer a credit monitoring tool - free of charge - to everyone, even people that don’t have a product with Capital One. Capital One’s new CreditWise is available in the Apple App Store and online at www.capitalone.com/creditwise.

“Knowing your credit score, understanding the things that can impact it, and taking steps to help increase it, is empowering and can be one of the most important things you can do to improve your financial health,” said Bill Hardekopf, CEO of LowCards.com. “A higher credit score can benefit you in so many areas of life. CreditWise will make it easier for consumers to manage their credit score and achieve a more stable financial position.”

CreditWise, an updated new version of Capital One’s popular Credit Tracker, is designed to offer a user-friendly experience that makes keeping on top of your credit easy. Key features include:

Unlimited access to your TransUnion credit information with no negative impact on your score
Weekly updates of your TransUnion VantageScore 3.0 credit score
Notifications when there’s a change to your credit report
Credit simulator that allows you to see the potential impact of financial decisions before you make them
An overview of key factors that impact your credit score
A full list of both open and closed lines of credit, organized by account type (e.g., real estate, credit cards, personal loans, etc.)
Balance details for both open and closed accounts

According to a recent Capital One survey, less than one-third of Americans (31 percent) know their credit score and 37 percent haven’t checked their score in more than a year. With CreditWise, Capital One aims to help people understand, improve and monitor their credit score.

“We first launched Credit Tracker in 2014 to help offer guidance to our U.S. credit card customers. It was an incredibly popular and helpful tool for our cardholders, and we decided to expand the experience with CreditWise to enable everyone to have a convenient and transparent way to monitor their score for free,” said Sarah Strauss, Managing Vice President of U.S. Card at Capital One. “CreditWise gives users so much more than just a score - it helps them understand what makes up their score, what makes it go up, what makes it go down, and focuses on actions they can take to improve it. With CreditWise, we have our customers’ backs when it comes to their credit health.”

“With CreditWise, Capital One is proactively addressing the credit score knowledge gap and empowering consumers with information they need to make well-informed financial decisions,” said Patty Hasson, Executive Director for Clarifi - a non-profit financial counseling organization. “Making this tool freely available can have a real and positive impact, helping consumers across the United States gain a better understanding of credit scores and the key factors that go into every person’s score. It is a useful tool that can help take some of the mystery out of what is a very important number in every U.S. consumer’s life.”