Is it possible to force-update Equifax that a specific credit card balance has been paid off?

Question

I called credit card issuer and they told me that they reported the latest $0 balance to credit bureaus.

I logged in creditkarma.com and can see that at least Transunion report shows latest $0 balance for more than a week.

However, Equifax report on creditkarma.com and equifax.com still shows the old balance that adversely impacts credit score.

Have 3 questions:

1. Am I under current assumption that Equifax is supposed to update records in their system for each credit card every month on the exact same day? Or can they decide to update balances in their system every two months?
2. Since I applied for mortgage few days before paying off this credit card balance, then could that be the reason Equifax refuses to update balance?
3. Is there a way to expedite request to Equifax to update balance in their system?

Answer 1

From my experience credit card companies typically update your credit profile monthly. It would pretty much be impossible to call and "force" an employee to update your profile outside this schedule.

Why does it matter?

If the mortgage financing company wants to see a zero balance on this credit card, they you can provide proof via a screen shot of your credit card login.

It is unlikely to significantly change your credit score in the short term.

Answer 2

While it is likely that there may be some delay in the credit card company marking the payment and balances, the other significant delaying factor is CreditKarma (CK). While a real time poll of your score may show a value/state in time, CK doesn't update real time. Their updates lag by almost a month.

Likely because they poll all the information that they are getting from the bureaus and consolidating/collating info once a month. Depending on your billing date for a credit card, the update from that card may not make it at the time they poll but will make it in the next poll.

So CK's version of Equifax may not be the one that a merchant/entity may be seeing.

Also, from my experience, if your score is very good, then the excellent score doesn't provide you any additional bonus. If the merchant/entity/bank said that this is a reason for giving you a worse rate than you'd like, then that is odd. For mortgage, it is not just the score but income, debt-to-income and so many other factors that they look at. A score difference of, say 20/30, shouldn't adversely affect your application terms.