Maintaining a good credit score is vital if you want to improve your overall financial health. Knowing your credit score is integral to keep track of your financial health and make the right decisions to improve your credit score itself.
Typically, you would have to pay a fee to a credit score report done by Equifax, but fintech companies like Mogo and Borrowell allow you to get free credit score reports now.
The two fintech companies offer more than credit score monitoring services to help you improve your financial health.
My Mogo vs. Borrowell comparison will discuss everything you can expect while using the two services to help you make an informed decision on which company would be more suitable to meet your needs.
- Free credit score and report
- Free credit score monitoring
- Offers unsecured loans
- Credit card comparison
- Safe and secure
- Free credit score
- Free identity fraud protection
- Sustainable spending
- Low-fee bitcoin trading
- Decent loan and mortgage products
- No-fee preloaded Visa Platinum card
About Mogo
Mogo is a fintech company based in Vancouver that was founded in 2003. It is a publicly-traded company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2015 and Nasdaq in 2018.
Mogo offers several services for its customers that include free credit score checks, personal loans, identity fraud protection, a Prepaid Platinum Visa card, and it operates as a cryptocurrency exchange that lets you buy Bitcoin.
Mogo has partnered with Equifax to provide its customers with free credit score reports, but the rest of its services make it much more than a credit score monitoring company. The fintech company has become quite popular over the years and surpassed 1.6 million members in 2021.
Pros
- Gives you the ability to buy Bitcoin
- The first and only company offering free identity fraud protection
- Offers a free Visa Platinum Prepaid Card
- A tree is planted when you make a transaction on MogoCard
Cons
- Doesn’t offer detailed credit score reports
- Interest rates for unsecured loans are considerably higher
About Borrowell
Borrowell is a fintech leader that has been around since 2014 as a digital lender providing low-interest personal loans to its customers. The completely digital platform has introduced several services to expand its offerings to customers, and the most significant development was its partnership with Equifax in 2016. Borrowell partnered with the company to become the first digital fintech platform offering Canadian citizens free access to their credit scores.
Borrowell is more than a credit score monitoring company, thanks to its expansive features that include a credit card comparison portal that lets registered members compare different credit cards. It is no surprise that the company has become very successful over the years and has over one million customers as of August 2021.
Pros
- Quick and hassle-free loan access
- Easy-to-use user interface
- Excellent option as a lender for debt management
- Top-notch bank-grade safety standards
Cons
- Limited loan options
- Interest rates are not as low as Home Equity Line of Credit
Mogo vs. Borrowell – Features, and Benefits
This section of my Mogo vs. Borrowell comparison will cover the different features and benefits offered by each fintech company to help you understand what you can expect if you sign up for each of the services.
Features and Benefits of Mogo
Mogo Free Credit Score
Mogo partners with Equifax to monitor your credit score for free. The platform conducts a soft check, which means that checking your credit score with Mogo will not affect your credit score. Mogo does not offer a comprehensive credit report covering details but offers you a good enough picture of your credit score.
MogoProtect
Mogo is the first and only fintech company in Canada that offers free identity fraud protection. Identity frauds cost Canadians almost $130 million a year. Its identity fraud protection service monitors your Equifax credit activity and warns you whenever there’s a hard inquiry, something that happens when someone applies for a loan or a credit card using your stolen credentials.
MogoSpend
Mogo offers you a free Visa Platinum Prepaid Card called MogoCard. The card and the MogoSpend account are free. Not using the MogoCard for 365 consecutive days carries a $1.99 per month fee and a $25 dishonored payment fee.
Mogo Loans
Mogo offers loans to borrowers from all credit score backgrounds through its lender partners. The company is not a lender itself, but it pairs you with Lendful or easyfinancial by goeasy Ltd. to get unsecured loans. The interest rates for the loans depend on your credit score.
Mogo Mortgage
Mogo offers mortgage brokerage services. While the fintech company is not a lender itself, it pairs you with the best mortgage products to help you get ideal rates and loan payment terms based on your financial circumstances.
MogoCrypto
You can allocate up to $1 million in your MogoCrypto account to trade Bitcoin. Mogo prides itself on being the only Bitcoin trading platform regulated by NASDAQ, the TSX, and FINTRAC. While you can only trade Bitcoin through MogoCrypto, you can rely on your cryptocurrency trades with MogoCrypto to be secure due to its security protocols.
Is Mogo Safe and Legit?
Mogo is a safe and legit company that is accredited and associated with the right regulatory bodies for the financial products and services it offers. The company also partners with reputable lenders and has become a major fintech company that also works as a cryptocurrency exchange because it offers adequate safety and security to its customers.
Features and Benefits of Borrowell
How Does Borrowell Generate Money?
Before Borrowell partnered with Equifax, you would have to pay around $20 per month to Equifax to get monthly credit score reports. You might be wondering how Borrowell allows you to enjoy the same service for free without charging you any money for it.
Borrowell generates revenues by providing recommendations to you from time to time that may be relevant for you. If you sign up for any of the products and services that Borrowell recommends, the company receives a commission from the providers of the product or service.
Borrowell also makes money by offering a personal loan. The company earns a fee on each loan it provides to its customers. The interest rate that you can secure for the loans from Borrowell on your credit score.
Is Borrowell Safe and Legit?
Yes, Borrowell is entirely safe and legitimate. The company has implemented bank-grade 256-bit encryption on all its data entries to protect sensitive financial information from hackers.
The 256-bit encryption complies with the high standards that all major Canadian banks adhere to, making it a crucial reason why I trust Borrowell to track my credit score.
Free Credit Score Monitoring
Borrowell offers its members free access to its Equifax credit score and report. The platform updates the credit scores each week, and checking your credit score does not have any impact on your credit score. You can keep closer track of your progress if you are trying to improve your credit health through the credit dashboard in the platform.
Borrowell Unsecured Loans
The company offers personal loans to help people with debt consolidation, home improvement projects, car purchases, business costs, paying off credit cards, and other major purchases. The company partners with lenders throughout Canada to offer competitive rates for loans based on your credit score and history.
Borrowell has a reputation for pairing its members with ideal loans that come without loan pre-payment fees if you can pay off the balance earlier. The loans are typically offered in 3- or 5-year terms.
Borrowell Credit Coaching
Borrowell also features Molly, Canada’s first AI-powered Credit Coach. The platform shows you an overview of your credit history, including any late payments and credit utilization history. These factors impact your credit score.
Borrowell offers you personalized tips and credit education to help you improve your score so that you can build up your credit health over time. You can also compare your credit score with the rest of Canada, so you have a benchmark that you can compare to when you are trying to improve your credit health.
Assistance in Tracking Your Bills
Borrowell’s bill-tracking tool is one of the platform’s latest features available exclusively on the app. The tracking tool establishes a secure link with your existing bank accounts to help you see your expected bulls and balances. This feature can go a long way in helping you improve your overall financial health by giving you the information necessary to manage your cash flow.
Payment history accounts for 35% of the Equifax credit score. The bill-tracking tool helps you avoid non-sufficient funds fees that can go up to $50 per transaction, allowing you to keep your credit score in better health.
Borrowell Financial Marketplace
Borrowell also provides you with periodic product recommendations that could pair well with you based on your credit score and history. As a member of Borrowell, you can compare rates and features within the app to leverage the most competitive rates available in Canada.
The financial marketplace gives you access to products from over 50 partners that include credit cards, personal loans, bank accounts, home insurance, mortgages, investment products, automated investment platforms, and much more.
Borrowell receives a commission from its partners if you choose to sign up for any of them through the platform, but the company does not bug you with useless recommendations just to earn commissions.
Mogo vs. Borrowell – The Verdict
If I had to choose just one of the two fintech companies to monitor my credit score, I would stick to using Borrowell. I don’t need to check my credit score to see how well I’m doing because my credit score is already good.
However, checking my credit score from time to time can help me detect if there’s any credit fraud under my name. Additionally, Borrowell offers plenty of features besides the free and detailed credit score reports that make it attractive.
Mogo could be a better choice for you if you want to use the features it offers that Borrowell doesn’t. I will briefly discuss for whom both credit card monitoring companies would be ideal.
Use Mogo if
- You want free identity fraud protection through MogoProtect
- You want to get the free Mogo prepaid card
- You want the ability to buy Bitcoin
You can check out my detailed Mogo review here to learn more about the credit score monitoring company.
Use Borrowell if
- You don’t want to buy Bitcoin
- You want more detailed reports that include the status of credit accounts, application dates, and your payment history.
- You want to use Molly, the Credit Coach
You can check out my detailed Borrowell review here to learn more about the credit score monitoring company.
I prefer Borrowell because I like its interface. It was the first company to offer free credit scores in Canada. It offers more detailed credit reports that include information like application dates, your payment history, and the status of your credit accounts. If you’re looking for a solution to check your credit scores online for free, you cannot go wrong with either option in the Mogo vs. Borrowell debate.
You can sign up for Borrowell here, and if you’re interested in Mogo, you can check it out here.
You’re out of date. Mogo no longer does 2% bitcoin cashback.
The 2% cashback stops on October 1, 2021, I have changed the review now to reflect this.