As long as you pay it off close to the due-date, your report will show up as having a non-zero daily balance. I have never paid a credit card in any way other than "in full" and "before the due date" and have a score of around 800.
> I have never paid a credit card in any way other than "in full" and "before the due date" and have a score of around 800.
There are a lot of very specific assumptions in there about the mechanism.
How do you know which dates' balances are relevant to the calculation? If your credit score is 800, then you probably don't have a "credit utilization" of zero, as it's widely believed that the optimal % is more than zero (not "too low" but also not "too high", whatever that means).
Basically the concept is that if you're already borrowing as much money as people are willing to lend you, those people probably have a good reason to not want to lend you more.
Also, as a bonus, the utilization component doesn't have history. If you're about to take out a loan, you can just borrow/pay back as much debt as you want the previous month for an ideal utilization.
Good resource, here's a bit about how you are likely to have a non-zero utilization even if paying your card off in full each month (linked from that article):
> Now things get a little trickier. Paying your balances in full each month isn't the same as maintaining 0% utilization. Here's why.
> Credit scoring systems calculate utilization using balance information that card issuers report monthly to the national credit bureaus (Experian, TransUnion and Equifax). Each issuer reports balance information on its own schedule, and many report to different bureaus on different days of the month. Each credit bureau also has its own timetable for revising your credit report once it has received a card issuer's update.
> For these reasons, if you use your credit cards at all, your utilization can vary from day to day at any one credit bureau—and it will differ from one credit bureau to another, even though all of their records are accurate.
> Here's a simple example:
> Let's say you use a credit card with a $5,000 credit limit and zero balance to make a $500 purchase on the 10th of the month. You then pay that balance in full on the 20th, before the charge even appears on your statement. If the card issuer reports your balance information to Experian on the 15th, then credit scores based on Experian data will reflect 10% utilization for that card on that month. Meanwhile, another credit bureau that gets updated on, say, the 25th will reflect 0% utilization for that card.
> Factor in multiple cards and balances, and you can see that your utilization on any given day is something of a moving target, and so are credit scores based on it. (The normal differences between credit scores based on data at different credit bureaus is one reason many lenders use more than one credit score when processing loan or credit applications.)
> Put another way, the only way to be sure you have 0% utilization all the time is to refrain from using your credit cards at all...
I have over an 800 score and never paid before the due date. They tell you the balance due ("Last statement Balance") and the date it is due on. Every card will let you schedule the payment for the due date.
They also won't knock you if you are a few days late. I have been late a handful of times before and never took a hit. They will also reimburse the late fee if you call, but obviously they won't do this often.
