When Paid Accounts are Deleted from Your Credit Report

Dear CBH,

Closing or paying off an account does not cause it to be removed immediately from your credit report. Remember, your credit report is a credit history. Closed or paid accounts will continue to be reported for a period of time.

If the account was never late and had no negative history before it was paid or closed it will remain on your credit report for 10 years from the date it was closed. Positive accounts, or accounts in good standing, continue to boost your creditworthiness even after they are closed.

If the account had late payments in its history, those missed payments will be deleted at seven years, but the closed account will continue to report for the full 10 years. If the account was in a negative status, such as charged off to bad debt, at the time it was paid or closed it will remain part of the credit report for seven years from the original delinquency date of the account. The original delinquency date is the date the account first became late and after which was never again current.

The good news is that the positive account history will remain longer than the negative history, which will help you rehabilitate your credit if you've had payment issues in the past.

Thanks for asking.
The "Ask Experian" team