Update 4/11/22: Discover has announced that this will be discontinued on June 6, 2022. Discover cardholders will be able to continue to view their FICO score on their statement on the Discover app. Website states:
Service Update: After careful consideration, we’ve decided to retire our credit scorecard offering for prospective customers on June 6, 2022. Registrations will not be accepted after March 1, 2022 and services will end on June 6, 2022. Primary cardholders can view their FICO® Score** on their statement, Discover.com or the Discover app.
Discover announced today the launch of their new website and service, creditscorecard.com. The new website gives everybody (not just Discover cardholders or account holders) access to their Experian FICO Score. In addition to the free score, they are also providing a breakdown of how the FICO score is calculated and what factors are helping/hurting an individuals score. Scores will be updated the later of every thirty days or the next time you log into Credit Score Card.
Discover were the first major credit card issuer to offer a free FICO score in November of 2013, a benefit that is still provided today (they made some additional improvements to this in July of 2015). Interestingly this score is based on your TransUnion credit report, rather than Experian which the new website uses. Other card issuers followed suit with FICOs Open Access program and now the majority of card issuers offer free FICO scores as a standard benefit.
This new addition by Discover will mean they are competing with other free credit monitoring websites such as: Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, Quizzle, Credit.com & WisePiggy. All of these sites use FAKO scores, rather than FICO scores. FICO scores are generally considered to be the industry standard, being used in 90% of all lending decisions. FAKO scores are rarely if ever used in these lending decisions, so it will be interesting to see how these other sites can improve their offerings to compete.
These sites also signal how Discover will try to monetize this new site, as they all typically present users with financial products such as credit cards (e.g Discover it or Discover it Miles) or deposit accounts (Cashback checking, savings & CDs). All in all I see this as a good move by Discover and hope they continue to add offerings like this and their Discover it Secured card for people with subprime credit.
