Yes. If you enroll a credit card with National Debt Relief, the card will be closed. The program requires you to stop using enrolled cards, and once payments stop arriving, your card issuer almost always closes the account on its own. Cards you leave out of the program can also be closed, limited, or repriced by their issuers once they see the delinquencies on your credit report. So the practical answer to whether National Debt Relief closes your credit cards is that closures come from two directions at once: the program’s own rules, and your creditors acting independently.
Why Enrolled Cards Get Closed
When a card goes into a debt settlement program, you agree to stop using it entirely. The balance has to stay fixed so the company can negotiate a specific lump-sum payoff with the creditor. New charges would move the number and make a settlement offer impossible to structure. Destroying the physical card or removing it from digital wallets is a standard enrollment step.
The issuer’s side of the closure is separate. Nearly every cardholder agreement lets the issuer suspend or terminate the account at any time, for reasons that include missed payments or a change in your financial situation. Federal law does not prevent a card company from closing your account under those circumstances; the authority comes from the contract you signed.1eCFR. 12 CFR Part 226 – Truth in Lending (Regulation Z) Once payments stop landing, closure follows.
What Happens to Cards You Don’t Enroll
Many people try to hold one card back for emergencies. It rarely survives. Card issuers watch your whole credit profile, and when they see missed payments or settlements elsewhere, they often act on the accounts you didn’t enroll, including ones with a zero balance. Common responses are lowering your credit limit, raising your rate, or closing the card.
When a creditor takes that kind of step based on information from your credit report rather than your history with them, it counts as an “adverse action.” Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the creditor has to notify you, identify the bureau that supplied the report, and tell you that you can request a free copy of that report within 60 days.2Federal Trade Commission. Using Consumer Reports for Credit Decisions: What to Know About Adverse Action and Risk-Based Pricing Notices If you’re already delinquent on the specific account being restricted, that same refusal isn’t treated as adverse action under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1691 – Scope of Prohibition
The Closure Timeline
A card doesn’t flip from active to closed overnight. After you stop paying the creditor directly, the sequence tends to run like this:
- Within days, the card stops working for new purchases, either because you’ve stopped using it or because the issuer blocks charges after a missed payment.
- Between 30 and 90 days, the creditor reports the account as past due, adding 30-, 60-, and 90-day delinquency marks with each missed billing cycle.
- Between 120 and 180 days, the creditor typically charges the account off as a loss and reports it closed. The debt may then be sold or assigned to a collector, or negotiated toward settlement.
Creditors report those status changes through the standardized Metro 2 format used across the credit reporting industry.4TransUnion. Credit Data Reporting – Getting Started The charge-off and the delinquencies that led up to it stay on your credit report for seven years from the date of that first missed payment.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
What to Handle Before the Cards Freeze
Recurring Charges and Autopay
Before enrolling a card, walk through any recurring charges attached to it: subscriptions, utilities, insurance premiums, streaming services. If those try to run against a frozen or closed card, they’ll decline. That can mean late fees from the biller, service interruptions, or a lapse in something like auto insurance.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lays out a three-step approach to stopping automatic payments. Revoke your authorization with the company charging you, in writing. Tell your bank or card issuer to block future charges from that company. Then watch the account for a few billing cycles to confirm the charges really stopped.6Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Do I Stop Automatic Payments From My Bank Account Move each recurring charge onto the payment method you’ll actually be using before your card is closed.
Rewards Balances
Unredeemed cash back, miles, or points are usually forfeited when the account closes. Most rewards programs require the account to be open and in good standing before you can use them. The CFPB has flagged the revocation of previously earned rewards when closure is outside the consumer’s control as potentially unfair, but that guidance mainly targets issuers closing accounts unilaterally for business reasons, not situations that involve missed payments.7Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Consumer Financial Protection Circular 2024-07 – Credit Card Rewards Programs Redeem what you can before you enroll.
Authorized Users
If someone else is listed as an authorized user on a card you’re enrolling, the delinquencies and eventual closure can show up on their credit report too. They can call the issuer and ask to be removed, and once they are, the account and its history should stop appearing on their file.
What the Closures Do to Your Credit Score
Debt settlement damages your credit, and the closures are only one piece of that damage. Several things stack:
- Every 30-, 60-, and 90-day late mark is a separate negative entry, and payment history is the single most influential factor in credit scoring.
- Closing a card removes its credit limit from your profile. If you carry balances on other cards, your overall utilization ratio jumps, and the score drops with it.
- Once a debt is resolved for less than the full balance, it’s reported as “settled” rather than “paid in full,” which signals to future lenders that the original obligation wasn’t met in full.
One narrow bit of good news on the closure question specifically: the FICO model doesn’t treat the “closed by grantor” notation itself as an added negative. Whether you closed the card or the issuer did, the closure status alone is neutral; the score hit comes from the delinquency history and the utilization change.8FICO. Score a Better Future Increases FICO Score Understanding
How Long the Closures Stay on Your Report
The negative marks tied to a settled account, including the late payments, charge-off, and settled status, can stay on your credit report for up to seven years from the date of the original delinquency.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports After that, they drop off.
Your score doesn’t wait the full seven years to recover. Credit scoring models weight recent behavior more heavily than older entries, so a consistent stretch of on-time payments after the program starts to outweigh the settlement-era damage well before the marks fall off. A secured credit card, which uses a refundable deposit as its limit, is the usual first step to rebuild an active account in good standing. Keep balances low, pay on time every month, and check your credit report periodically to confirm the settled accounts are being reported accurately.