Credit Karma Wants to Become Your Trusted Credit Adviser

Credit Karma is a website that allows users access to their credit score for free and provides recommendations for credit cards. That’s a business that depends a lot on its users’ trust.

Here’s how the website works: Log on and you get an easy-to-digest overview of what’s on offer. You provide some personal information, and in return you get access to your credit score and analysis of the main drivers of that score; you can also file disputes if something’s incorrect. Other freebies include alerts for any changes to your credit score, plus the usual financial calculators and educational tools. Credit Karma crunches your data to make product recommendations that match your credit profile, which means a higher likelihood of approval, and may also help you save by giving you a lower interest rate. That’s how the company makes money: If you get approved for one of its recommended products—from credit cards to personal and car loans, as well as car insurance—the provider pays Credit Karma a fee.