How many missed payments it takes before a credit card is closed depends on who you ask: your bank or your bank’s regulator. Federal banking rules require issuers to close and write off an account after roughly six consecutive missed payments, or 180 days of delinquency. But your cardholder agreement almost always lets the issuer close the account much earlier, sometimes after a single missed payment. The 180-day mark is a ceiling, not a promise.
The Six-Payment Federal Ceiling
The outer limit comes from the Uniform Retail Credit Classification and Account Management Policy, overseen by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. Under that policy, open-end credit accounts like credit cards that go unpaid for 180 cumulative days from the contractual due date must be classified as a loss and charged off the bank’s books. The charge-off must happen no later than the end of the month in which the 180-day window runs out. Every federally insured institution follows the same rule.
A charge-off is an accounting event, not a cancellation of the debt. The bank reclassifies your unpaid balance from an active asset to a loss, closes the account to any new activity, and either pursues the balance internally or sells it to a third-party collector. You still owe the full balance plus the interest and fees that have piled up.
One quirk worth knowing: sending in less than your minimum each month doesn’t stop the clock. Under FFIEC reporting guidelines, a payment that falls below 90 percent of the contractual amount due isn’t treated as a full payment. Partial payments get aggregated, and only when they add up to a full monthly installment does the bank advance the date of the oldest unpaid payment. Delinquency keeps marching forward in the meantime.
Why Your Card Can Close Long Before the Sixth Missed Payment
Most cardholder agreements include broad default clauses that let the issuer close your account, demand immediate payment of the full balance, or both after even one missed payment. Banks don’t always pull that trigger quickly, but they have the contractual right to.
Issuers also watch signals beyond your payment history with them. A sharp drop in your credit score, new defaults appearing on your credit report from other lenders, or a sudden spike in your overall debt load can all prompt an early closure. That means your card can be shut down even if you’ve never missed a payment on it. The CARD Act restricts issuers from raising your interest rate on existing balances based on your behavior with other creditors, but it doesn’t stop them from closing the account entirely.
Federal law does require 45 days’ written notice before an issuer raises your interest rate or makes other significant changes to your account terms, and that notice has to inform you of your right to cancel the account before the change takes effect. The notice requirement applies to rate and fee changes. It doesn’t apply to outright closure for default.
What Each Missed Payment Triggers
The slide from one missed payment to a closed account follows a predictable path, and each stage makes recovery harder.
- 30 days past due (one missed payment): Your issuer reports the late payment to the three national credit bureaus. This is typically the first hit your credit score takes, and relative to what came before, it’s often the most damaging.
- 60 days past due (two missed payments): Collection calls and letters intensify. Many issuers trigger a penalty interest rate at this point, which can push your APR into the high 20s or above. Under federal law, issuers can raise your rate on existing balances once you’re 60 or more days late.
- 90 days past due (three missed payments): The FFIEC classifies accounts at this stage as “substandard.” Internal collection departments ramp up outreach, and the issuer may begin restricting your ability to use the card.
- 120 days past due (four missed payments): Many banks suspend all card privileges. The issuer is now preparing for the possibility that you’ll never pay.
- 150 days past due (five missed payments): The bank begins final preparations for the charge-off, including packaging the account for potential sale to a debt buyer.
- 180 days past due (six missed payments): The account is charged off. It’s closed permanently, and the balance is reclassified as a loss.
Fees and Penalty Interest Make Each Month More Expensive
Each month you miss a payment, your issuer adds a late fee. These currently run roughly $30 to $41 for most major issuers, with higher fees for repeat late payments within a six-month window. A CFPB rule that would have capped these fees at $8 for large issuers was vacated by a federal court in April 2025, so the older fee structure remains in place. On top of the late fees, any penalty APR applied to your balance means interest charges accelerate sharply. By 180 days, these added costs can inflate your original balance by hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
What a Closed Account Means for What You Owe
Closure doesn’t erase the balance. After charge-off, the original issuer either hands the debt to its own recovery team or sells it to a third-party debt buyer, who typically pays a small fraction of the face value and then pursues you for the full amount. The new owner has the legal right to sue you, and if they win a court judgment, they can pursue wage garnishment. Federal law caps garnishment for consumer debt at 25 percent of your disposable earnings per pay period, or the amount by which your weekly take-home pay exceeds 30 times the federal minimum wage, whichever results in a smaller garnishment. Some states set lower limits, and a handful prohibit wage garnishment for consumer debt altogether.
If anyone co-signed your account, they owe the full balance too, and creditors can pursue them directly without first exhausting efforts against you. Late payments and the charge-off appear on both credit reports.
How Long the Closure Shows on Your Credit
A charge-off is one of the most damaging entries that can appear on a credit report. Federal law limits reporting to seven years from the date the delinquency first began, not from the date of the charge-off itself. Because charge-offs happen at 180 days, the reporting clock actually starts about six months before the charge-off is recorded, giving you roughly six and a half years of visibility on your report after the account is written off.
The damage is front-loaded. A fresh charge-off can drop a good credit score by 100 points or more. Over time the impact fades, especially if you build positive payment history on other accounts. Paying the balance, in full or by settlement, updates the status to “charged off, paid” or “charged off, settled.” Either looks better than an unpaid charge-off. The seven-year clock doesn’t restart just because you paid; it’s anchored to the original delinquency date.
What to Do Before You Hit Closure
If you’re falling behind, calling your issuer before the account deteriorates is the single most effective thing you can do. Most major credit card companies offer hardship programs that can include temporarily reduced interest rates, waived late fees, and lower minimum payments over a set period. These programs vary widely and aren’t always advertised, but they exist because the bank would rather recover something on modified terms than charge off the entire balance.
Timing matters. Once you’re 90 or 120 days past due, the issuer’s flexibility shrinks. At that point you’re dealing with a collections department whose job is recovering money, not restructuring your account. If you call at 30 days and explain a job loss or medical emergency, you’re more likely to reach someone authorized to offer real relief.
After a charge-off, settlement becomes the primary option. Creditors and debt buyers routinely accept less than the full balance to close out the debt, particularly when the alternative is collecting nothing. How much less depends on how old the debt is, whether the collector bought it at a discount, and how likely they think you are to pay in full. Get any settlement agreement in writing before sending money.