How an American Express Supplementary Card Affects Your CIBIL Score

If you hold an American Express credit card, you may have added multiple supplementary cards to your account to claim reward points or Amazon vouchers from the Amex supplementary card offer, which was recently renewed with a similar promotion.

This article explains the after-effects of issuing supplementary cards and what you should watch for. Here’s everything you need to know.

Authorized User

The concept of an authorized user is common in countries such as the USA: a person new to credit can quickly build a score by being added as an authorized user on a primary account with a strong history. I expected something similar in India for a while. When I asked Amex several years ago, their response was that they didn’t support this model in India.

Recently, however, I noticed a supplementary card account issued from my primary Amex account appearing on a family member’s CIBIL report with the label “Authorized User.” This indicates that Amex is reporting supplementary card usage to CIBIL.

Whether CIBIL factors this information heavily into score calculations is unclear — it likely has some effect but possibly with low weight. Still, the appearance of supplementary accounts on credit reports is a significant change for the Indian credit ecosystem. Unfortunately, it brings a potential downside as well.

Your Contacts are shared

When activating a supplementary card, some cardholders provide the supplementary user’s own mobile number and email, while others enter the primary cardholder’s contact details to simplify the process. If you use your own contact details for a supplementary account, those details can be written onto the supplementary cardholder’s credit report.

In other words, your contact information can appear in the supplementary cardholder’s CIBIL record, and in some cases it may replace the supplementary user’s original contact details. In my experience, after issuing a supplementary card to a friend, his address and mobile number were updated on my credit records, and my mobile number disappeared from my own report. Meanwhile, that same mobile number showed up on a family member’s report.

This creates practical problems. CIBIL uses registered contact numbers to send OTPs for authentication. For example, when I attempted to authenticate a family member’s CIBIL account, the OTP was sent to my phone because my number had been recorded on their profile. That can be confusing and inconvenient for both parties.

So, How to Fix?

You can raise a dispute with CIBIL to correct incorrect contact details, but a simpler first step is to update the contact information with American Express directly. Contact Amex customer support and request that the correct mobile number and address be recorded for the relevant accounts. Amex should report the updated details to CIBIL the next time billing information is generated and submitted.

The Amex representative I spoke with confirmed this would be the process, and that updated information should flow to CIBIL on the next report.

I remain cautious and plan to verify the change after a month. If the issue persists after Amex updates the information, the next step is to file a dispute with CIBIL to have the records corrected officially.

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Bottomline

Going forward, whenever you issue an American Express supplementary card for someone, make sure you enter the supplementary cardholder’s own contact details on the account. Using your own information to make activation easier can unintentionally overwrite or mix contact details across credit records, creating authentication problems and confusion for both parties.

Have you encountered this issue? Share your experience in the comments below.