Friday Funding Play π³ Sacred Wealth Familyβ¦ tap in for this weekβs Friday Funding Play. A lot of people think every credit card application works the same way. You apply, the bank slaps a hard inquiry on your credit, and then you sit there hoping the approval comes through. But the reality is the system isnβt always that straightforward. Right now there are a few issuers where weβre consistently seeing a different type of workflow. Instead of hard pull first, decision laterβ¦ the process is showing up as soft pull β approval β accept. In plain English, that means you can sometimes see whether youβre approved β and even see the limit β before you actually commit to the account. If youβre strategic about how you move, that changes the game. Letβs walk through the main cards where weβre seeing this behavior. First up is the Apple Card. Apple runs their credit card through Goldman Sachs and they typically check TransUnion. What makes this one interesting is the approval process. You submit the application and Apple will show you whether youβre approved and exactly what your credit limit and APR will be before you accept the card. At that stage the check is a soft pull, so youβre not committing to anything yet. If you decide to accept the offer, thatβs when the account moves forward. Next is Citizens Bank, including some of their Private Client and Private Bank cards. Citizens typically pulls Experian and they have a pre-qualification tool that runs through a soft inquiry. That tool allows you to see if youβre likely to be approved before you move into a full application. This bank is more regionally concentrated, mainly operating across states like Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, and a handful of others along the East Coast and Midwest. Then you have BMO β Bank of Montreal β which has been expanding heavily across the U.S. market. BMO often checks TransUnion, and what weβre seeing is soft-pull pre-approvals showing up frequently, especially if you already have a relationship with them as a banking customer. When the system recognizes an existing relationship, approvals can sometimes be shown up front before the final acceptance happens.