A credit card for building a credit history?

The first thing to do is to get a credit report for her from Experian or Call Credit, Equifax have a pretty terrible website you can probably avoid them. Noddle.co.uk is the brand name of Call Credit.

Is your wife on your bills jointly?

If she is then that should be reflected on the credit report and will help, you can ask any of the credit reference agencies for a report for a small fixed fee I think it is £2 currently, once you have a report you will have a far better idea where she stands in the scoring.

You can also get a free score from most of the agencies this just gives you a number without the detailed credit history report, you can also sign up for a free trial of a service like Credit Expert from Experian which will give you both the score and the report

Regards Cards use one of the checking tools to find out what she 'might' get, they will check the likelihood of her being accepted for a card without resulting in a credit search, lots of credit searches reduce your score and these services don't get recorded as an official search.

https://www.noddle.co.uk/products/credit-cards

https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/credit-cards

Regards actual cards that she might be able to get with a very limited credit history look at Aqua Classic https://www.aquacard.co.uk/credit-cards/

or at Capital One https://www.capitalone.co.uk/creditcards/secure/find-my-card.jsf

Just be warned that the interest rates on these cards are utterly horrendous and the quoted interest rate on their sites is the lowest rate you will be offered the actual rate can be much higher.

Aqua will start with a credit limit of only £250 but that increases after 6 months if the account is well maintained and then increases every 4 months after that if it continues to be well maintained.

If she is offered a card, make a point of teaching her that she really needs to pay off the whole balance every month otherwise they are very very expensive, they are not free money and if she treats it like free money it will all end in misery and instead of building a good credit history she will just end up with a terrible credit history and a lot of debt.

Just to add there is a good chance that Aqua or Cap One will say yes, if they do you then need to know how to maintain a good history and what constitutes a good history.

The credit references agencies will mark a person down if you are using more than 10-30% of your available credit so if you have a credit limit on one card of £300 and you carry a reported balance of £105 your score will be reduced.

Further if you have 2 cards with two limits say £600 on one and £300 on the other carrying a total balance of more than £270 will also reduce your score.

The trick is to pay bills on time and it is best to clear a credit card every month.

Personally I view even the use of a card that is paid in full on time as a dangerous thing, because you have effectively borrowed (for free) the amount you are paying off, if you are paying that from salary then the reality is that you are in debt to the tune of one months credit limit or however much you have spent on the card, debt is still debt, however if you pay it from your savings each month then its not debt and that is the only way in my mind, I pay mine with the money I have in this months salary not the money I have in my next salary.

An alternative to credit cards and a card that she will definitely get is the Cashplus Mastercard https://www.cashplus.com/ it s a prepaid card you can't get into debt and it helps build a credit history if you use their credit builder option. Works like a credit card but only lets you spend money you have and they have a good online website.

I was adding to my reply earlier when you replied so you might not have read all the options.

It's still worth getting a full credit report, that will give your wife a baseline as to her overall credit rating now, and she can keep checking it to see if it goes up or down, being accepted for Cap One will result in a hard check that will now be recorded on her file, any other credit applications in the next 6 months will have an impact on her credit score and potentially on any credit limit increases she might be offered.