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I've had my Costco-branded American Express credit card for 12+ years. CitiBank will be purchasing the portfolio from AMEX in line with their new deal with Costco. Assuming no hard credit pull and no ding for not being the initiator of opening the new card, will this transaction have a negative impact on my credit score? My thought process behind this would be that my account age average will take a pretty decent hit with my 12-year old account closing and a new account opening.

Seeing that I don't particularly have a need for the CitiBank version of the card, would the impact be significantly more if I close the AMEX and opened a new card of my choosing so that I retain the available balance when my score is analyzed? I would believe that closing the account myself would have no greater impact than it being closed as a result of the transition, but applying for and opening a new card would have a greater impact.

Ultimately I don't believe either scenario would really have an impact that would "harm" my credit, but I like to be educated as far as what options are available and what impacts will be incurred.

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  • It's my understanding that average account age is really about determining whether or not you're new to debt and if you've been opening a lot of new accounts. Worst case scenario is your oldest account is closed and you open a new account. If your average account age is still a couple of years this likely will have a meaningless impact on your score.
    – quid
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 21:21

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Should make no difference at all to scores. Reselling loan portfolios happens all the time; the industry knows how to handle it.

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  • There are some nuances here. AMEX in particular reports other cards as having the same age as the oldest card because your account is the same age. I added an another AMEX card to handle this situation. I will watch my report to see what the age is on the new Citi card, but I don't particularly care since I have no need for any further credit. The rewards available will determine whether I keep the Citi card.
    – NL - SE listen to your users
    Commented Mar 13, 2016 at 4:46

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