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Creditors generally report late payments to the credit bureaus once you're at least 30 days late. The exact timing could depend on your account's billing cycle. Missing a payment by a few days won't affect your credit scores, but it could have other consequences, such as late fees and rescinded benefits.
When Do Late Payments Get Reported?
Late payments get reported to the credit bureaus when your creditor sends an update to the bureaus and your payment is at least 30 days late. One exception is with federal student loans, which don't get reported as late until you're at least 90 days past due.
Creditors send updates to the credit bureaus at different times, and there's no way to know exactly when the late payment status will show up. But many creditors send updates monthly, so you could expect the late payment to appear on your credit report within a month or two of falling behind on your payments.
Creditors use different codes to indicate your account's status. There's a code for when your account is current and a code for when your account is 30 days past due. There are also codes for when you fall further behind: 60, 90, 120, 150 or 180 or more days past due.
But there's no code for an account being one to 29 days late, so your creditors may report your account is current if your payment is only a few days late.
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How Late Payments Affect Your Credit Score
Late payments can either hurt or have no affect on your credit scores depending on how late your payment is and what else is in your credit report.
- When you first miss the due date: Being one day late won't have any effect on your credit scores, but you might be charged a late payment fee and lose some account benefits. Even missing a payment by a whole week won't hurt your credit.
- 30 days late: Once you're 30 days late, the creditor can report your late payment to the credit bureaus. The new late payment could hurt your credit scores, and the score drop tends to be largest for consumers who previously had excellent credit.
- 60 days late: Falling further behind could lead to a greater impact on your credit scores.
- 90 days late: Credit scores are designed to predict the likelihood that someone will fall 90 days behind on a bill during the next 24 months. You might see an even larger drop at 90 days late.
- Additional missed payments: If you don't bring your account current, the creditor may continue reporting the late payment status. At some point, it may also charge off the debt and send or sell the account to a collection agency. The collection agency can separately report the collection account to the credit bureaus, which can also hurt your scores.
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How Do I Know if There's a Late Payment on My Credit Report?
You can request and review your credit reports to see if there are any late payments in your accounts' payment histories. Depending on where you get your report, the credit report might have color-coded payment histories so the late payments will stand out. Your Experian credit report also separates accounts with late payments from accounts that have never been late.
How Long Do Late Payments Stay on Your Credit Report?
Late payments can stay on your credit report for seven years from when the account first went past due. The late payment can stay in your credit history regardless of whether your account is open or closed.
If you brought the account current and then it was closed, the late payment will still fall off after seven years but your account will stay in your credit report for 10 years.
If you never brought the account current and it was closed while it was past due, the entire account and connected collection accounts will be removed from your credit report seven years after the initial late payment in the series. That initial late payment date is also called the original delinquency date or date of first delinquency after which the account was not brought current.
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What to Do if You Miss a Payment
Contact your creditor as soon as possible if you've missed your payment's due date or think you'll have trouble affording your next payment.
- Try to bring your account current. If you can make the required payment within 30 days, you can avoid consequences to your credit scores.
- Ask for a refund. Some loans have grace periods, and you might find that missing a payment by a few days doesn't result in any additional fees or penalties. However, if you were charged a fee and then brought your account current, you could call and ask to get the fee reversed. If you typically pay your credit card bill in full each month and the late payment led to interest charges, you may be able to get those back as well.
- Ask about hardship options. When you've missed payments and aren't able to bring the account current, you can contact your creditor and ask about hardship options. Some lenders and credit card companies may work with you to lower your interest rate or monthly payment, get you on a different payment plan or let you temporarily stop making payments without being considered late.
- Set up alerts. If you can usually afford your payments but sometimes forget to make them on time, consider setting up alerts to get emails, texts or push notifications about upcoming due dates.
- Enroll in autopay. You could also enroll in autopay to ensure you won't miss payments in the future. However, make sure you'll always have enough money in your bank account to avoid an overdraft.
Learn more >> How to Avoid Late Payments
Frequently Asked Questions
You can't remove an accurate late payment from your credit reports if you missed the payment, even if you've brought the account current. But you do have the right to file a dispute with the credit bureau if you find a late payment in your credit report that's associated with a fraudulent account or if you know you made the payment on time. The simplest option for filing disputes with Experian is using the online Dispute Center.
Contact your creditor to see if it will offer any hardship options if you can't make your payment on time. If you don't have any options, list all your monthly payments and prioritize them based on how missing a payment will affect you and your family. For example, you may want to prioritize rent, auto loans and utility bills over credit card payments.
Making a partial payment in place of a full payment won't affect your credit: The creditor can still report you as late if you don't pay the minimum amount due. If you can't afford full payments, you might want to prioritize payments and bills that will immediately affect you over making partial payments.
Making partial credit card payments early, and then paying the remainder of your bill by the due date, can sometimes help your credit scores. Credit card issuers tend to report your account details to the bureaus around the end of each billing cycle, which may be about three weeks before your payment's due date. Making partial payments early can lower your reported balance, which decreases your utilization rate and can help your credit scores.
Monitor Your Credit Reports for Late Payments
Creditors will generally try to contact you when your payment is late. But sometimes there's a mistake, creditors don't have your current contact information or you forget about an account and miss the correspondence.
Experian's free credit report monitoring can send you immediate alerts when there are important changes in your credit reports, including late payments and new credit inquiries. You can also track your FICO® Score☉ and see what's helping and hurting your score the most.
