New accounts may not show up on your credit report due to your creditor's reporting schedule and choice of credit bureau, a Social Security number mismatch, or simply creditor oversight.
Creditors can choose their own schedule for reporting to the credit bureaus. Large companies may report once a month, while others may report once a quarter. So if you were approved for your credit account in the last 60 days, it's very likely that your account has not appeared on your credit report due to a timing error.
If more than 60 days have passed since your account was approved, you should contact your creditor and ask why your account is not listed. It's possible that they simply chose not to report your account to the credit bureau that produced your report, but did report it to another one (or two). Lenders have the discretion to choose which bureuas they report to, so this should not be a surprise. Another possibility is that your account was forgotten due to an error or technical problem. If that's the case, they should be able to fix the error and report your account to the credit bureaus.
Finally, it's possible that your new account isn't showing on your credit report due to an inadvertent error. If you entered the incorrect Social Security number on your application (by transposing digits, for example), your account will not appear on your credit report because these numbers are used to match up accounts with credit reports. Your creditor can easily tell you if this is the case when you contact them.
Remember that you can check your TransUnion credit report for free through your WalletHub account and dispute any incorrect items.
This answer was last updated on 08/03/20 and it was first published on 09/08/16. For the most current information about a financial product, you should always check and confirm accuracy with the offering financial institution. Editorial and user-generated content is not provided, reviewed or endorsed by any company.
