If you have bad credit and are applying for a credit card, one of the things that they might offer you is a partially secured credit card. If you aren’t familiar with a secured credit card this may seem strange to you, but in fact is a practice often used by those trying to build or rebuild their credit. Partially secured credit cards work identically to secured credit cards, except in that the amount that you use to secure the card is less than the actual credit limit that you will receive. For instance, for a credit limit of $1000 you might only have to secure the card with $500.

To get a partial secured credit card the first thing that you need to do is apply for a secured credit card to a company that offers both partial secured credit cards and regular secured cards. You might get a secured Visa or Mastercard depending on which brand of credit processor that the company goes with. There will probably be a fee associated with signing up for the secured card as well as an annual or monthly fee. These fees are just fine, but try not to let them exceed about fifty bucks. There are companies out there that will charge you a hundred dollars to sign up and then ten dollars and interest on what you charge on the card beyond that.

One thing that you’ll want to make sure that your secured credit card company does is report as a secured credit card. Lenders know about secured credit cards and that you have top up a cash deposit to get a credit balance on the card. If it’s your own money that is at stake, they don’t see it as a huge thing for you to make your credit card payments. However, if you are making payments on a secured credit card that actually reports as just a regular credit card to the bureaus then you will get much more mileage out of your card and out of making your payments on time.

Another thing with secured credit cards is that you’ll want to find out how many of the three credit bureaus that they report to. Equifax, Transunion and Experian are the three big credit reporting agencies and you’ll want to try to find a company that offers secured cards that reports to all three if possible. However, most of the time they will only report to one or two and your partially secured card will only be counted towards your credit score if the next lender that you apply for credit with checks your credit using that particular bureau.

The best place to start if you want a partial secured card is to see your bank or credit union. They will be able to tell you if they offer secured credit cards or partially secured credit cards. If your bank does not offer that particular service then you can check online. If you need to know what your credit report contains to determine whether or not you will have to pay the entire deposit to open up a line of credit or just part of it, you can, by law, get one free credit report per year from all three credit bureaus by going to the website specifically set up for that service. The website is run by the credit bureaus and is at www.annualcreditreport.com.