Easiest Store Credit Cards to Get Approved For

“Easiest” doesn’t mean guaranteed — every card issuer, store cards included, has to clear a legal ability-to-pay bar before approving anyone, a point covered in full in our guide to what actually decides store-card approval. It also doesn’t mean what a lot of “easiest store card” lists elsewhere on the web still claim it means: the single most commonly recommended answer, Fingerhut, is no longer obtainable at all. Following that kind of outdated advice means applying for a card that will never approve anyone, because the application form itself no longer exists.

This guide sticks to cards a reader can actually apply for today, sorted into the two lenience tiers this site’s own reviews have already established — 13 cards in the more lenient “Fair”-credit tier, 5 in the “Good”-credit tier just above them — plus a fallback for anyone whose credit is too thin, or too thin a file, for any of the 18. Every card here has its own dedicated review on this site, so the tier placement traces back to real, sourced research rather than a generic aggregator ranking.

Why “Easiest” Doesn’t Mean Guaranteed

The CARD Act of 2009, implemented as Regulation Z §1026.51, requires every card issuer to evaluate an applicant’s ability to make the required minimum payments — based on income, assets, and current debt — before opening any account. There’s no carve-out for store cards, and there’s no carve-out for a card marketed as easy to get. This is already covered in detail in our guide to what actually decides store-card approval; the short version is that the score gets an application in the room, but a federal ability-to-pay check still has to clear before anyone gets approved.

Fingerhut’s own account paperwork makes the same point from the issuer’s side. Its WebBank-issued credit agreement states plainly that every application is “subject to final approval by us” — language from a card that was, until recently, one of the most commonly cited “guaranteed approval” store cards on the internet. That’s the tell: even the product most associated with guaranteed approval was never contractually guaranteed. Where a secondary source like WalletHub uses “guaranteed approval” language for a card — it comes up later in this guide for both the Amazon Secured Card and Montgomery Ward — read it as marketing shorthand for very high approval odds, not a literal promise.

That distinction matters for how to read this whole guide. Nothing below is ranked by a published cutoff score, because none of the issuers behind these cards — Synchrony, Comenity, Citi Retail Services, Capital One, TD Bank — publish one. The “Fair” and “Good” labels used in the two tiers below come from each card’s own independently sourced review, not from a formula any issuer discloses. That’s a meaningfully more grounded starting point than a generic “easiest cards” list built from marketing copy, but it’s still a lenience ranking, not an approval promise.

Fingerhut Is Still Being Recommended Elsewhere — It’s Gone

Fingerhut’s WebBank-issued accounts — both the revolving Advantage account and the FreshStart installment product — stopped accepting new purchases and new applications on October 2, 2025. The closure followed a second bankruptcy filing by parent company Bluestem Brands and the wind-down of its Eden Prairie, Minnesota headquarters, reported independently by the Star Tribune and covered in the American Bankruptcy Institute’s own newsroom. Fetching fingerhut.com directly today shows only a login and account-servicing flow for existing customers — not a working storefront.

If a list elsewhere online still names Fingerhut as an “easiest” store card to get, it’s out of date — skip it. Fingerhut had spent years as one of the internet’s default answers to “easiest store card to get with bad credit,” largely because it never required an in-store purchase relationship the way a retail-branded card does. That reputation is exactly why it keeps surfacing in older content that hasn’t been updated since the October 2025 closure. Every card in the two tiers below is a card this site has independently reviewed and that a reader can actually apply for right now.

The Easiest Tier: This Site’s Fair-Credit Store Cards

These are the 13 store cards this site has reviewed with a “Fair”-credit recommendation — the most lenient group this site covers, based on each card’s own review research (mostly The Points Guy or NerdWallet, per each review’s own sourcing). Most are issued by Synchrony or Comenity — see our guide to Comenity Bank (Bread Financial) if that issuer name is unfamiliar — with a few backed by Citi, Capital One, or TD Bank.

None of these issuers publish an official minimum score or a public approval formula — the “Fair” label comes from each review’s own research, not from a company-stated cutoff. See our guide to what credit score you need for a store credit card for how these score ranges are framed more broadly.

The list spans a lot of ground: home improvement (Menards, Home Depot, MyLowe’s), fashion and department stores (Macy’s, Dillard’s, Burlington, TJX, Ross), furniture (Ashley, Wayfair), general merchandise (Target Circle), and electronics (Best Buy). That breadth is worth noting on its own — the easiest tier isn’t confined to one category of retailer, so whatever a reader shops most often, there’s a reasonable chance a currently-open, relatively lenient option already exists for it.

The Next Tier Up: Good-Credit Store Cards (Including Kohl’s and JCPenney)

These 5 cards carry a “Good”-credit recommendation in this site’s own reviews — one tier above the group above, not out of reach, but not the most lenient option on this list either.

Kohl’s and JCPenney are worth a specific note, because coverage of them elsewhere online doesn’t agree with itself. This site’s own dedicated reviews of Kohl’s Card and JCPenney Credit Card both cite The Points Guy’s recommendation of a 670 score — solidly “Good,” not “Fair” — for both cards, with no Doctor of Credit coverage of either to weigh against it. Separately, some general secondary coverage describes both as being among the most broadly lenient store cards available, with one summary going as far as claiming any credit history will do for JCPenney.

Those two characterizations don’t reconcile, and rather than split the difference, this guide follows this site’s own card-specific research: Kohl’s and JCPenney stay in this “Good” tier, not the easiest tier above. That’s the more conservative read, and it’s the one backed by a dedicated card-specific source rather than a general summary describing an entire category at once. If a reader’s credit already comfortably clears “Good,” the practical difference between the two tiers matters less — but for anyone closer to the “Fair” end of the range, it’s worth treating Kohl’s and JCPenney as a step up in difficulty from the 13 cards above, not as equally easy.

If Your Credit Is Too Thin for Any of These: A Secured Fallback

If none of the 18 cards above look like a realistic approval — thin file, no credit history yet, or a score below what either tier typically needs — a secured card sidesteps the score question almost entirely. The Amazon Secured Card, issued by Synchrony Bank, is the practical near-guaranteed option in this category: it’s deposit-based, and the deposit amount is what sets the credit limit, which makes approval depend primarily on the deposit rather than the credit score. Reported terms put the standard purchase APR around 10%, with 2% back at Amazon.com for Prime members.

The mechanism is what makes this a genuine fallback rather than just another application: with an unsecured card, the issuer is extending credit based partly on a prediction about the applicant’s future behavior, which is exactly where a thin or damaged file works against someone. With a secured card, the applicant’s own deposit is already covering the issuer’s risk before a single purchase is made, which is why the score matters far less here than it does for any of the 18 cards above.

One caveat worth flagging directly: Amazon’s own official help-center pages for this card returned a server error on every direct-fetch attempt made while researching this guide, across multiple sessions. The mechanics above are corroborated independently by WalletHub, NerdWallet, Chain Store Age, and BestCards.com, but confirm current terms directly with Amazon or Synchrony before applying rather than treating this guide’s figures as the final word. And to be clear: “approval depends primarily on the deposit” is not the same as “guaranteed approval” — no card earns that label, per the CARD Act point above. For more secured options beyond this one, including cards from other issuers, see our best secured credit cards roundup.

What About Montgomery Ward and Other Catalog Credit?

Montgomery Ward’s online store, wards.com, is still active today — selling furniture, appliances, electronics, and home goods, and prominently promoting a “Wards Credit” prequalification flow. The company has been owned by Colony Brands since 2008, and unlike every other card in this guide, it appears to extend credit directly rather than through a bank issuer.

Wards.com’s own official Wards Credit FAQ resolves the product-type question directly: the account is revolving, with available credit that “increases and decreases based on your credit limit, how much you have purchased, and how much you have paid,” open-ended with no fixed number of payments, and it reports to the credit bureaus — a genuine store credit card, not a buy-now-pay-later or fixed-installment product. The same page confirms the credit is extended by Montgomery Ward directly rather than through a bank: “Our credit is not issued by or through a national or state-chartered bank.”

What that official page does not state is any minimum credit score. The “500+” figure sometimes cited for Wards Credit still traces to a single source, WalletHub — a check of Doctor of Credit, NerdWallet, and Bankrate turned up no dedicated Montgomery Ward coverage to corroborate it. This guide still isn’t ranking or tiering Wards Credit alongside the 18 cards above — an unsourced score requirement isn’t enough to place it in either the Fair or Good tier — it’s mentioned here only as a confirmed-genuine catalog-credit alternative, not because its approval odds have been vetted to the same standard as the 18 cards above. Anyone considering it should still verify current terms directly on wards.com before applying.

How to Improve Your Odds Before You Apply

The factors that decide a borderline case are covered in full in our guide to what actually decides store-card approval — this is the short version. Income and ability-to-pay is a legal requirement, not optional, for any issuer. An existing checking or savings relationship with the card’s issuing bank can move the needle, since it gives the issuer more financial visibility than a credit report alone provides. Spacing applications out, rather than applying for several cards close together, avoids compounding hard-inquiry impact — see our guide to whether store credit cards hurt your credit for why applications don’t get a “rate shopping” grace window the way other loan types do.

Utilization matters too: paying down existing balances before applying can shift that ratio in a single billing cycle, faster than most of the other factors on this list can realistically change. And several issuers maintain unpublished, company-specific policies on top of all of this — waiting periods between applications, custom scoring models, and relationship-based exceptions that never show up on a credit report. Where a card offers a prequalification tool — a soft pull that doesn’t touch the score — it’s the one concrete, no-risk step worth taking before applying for real, since it’s the closest thing to a free look at approval odds with a specific issuer.

Bottom Line

Start with the 13-card Fair tier above — it’s this site’s own verified easiest cluster today, and every card in it is currently obtainable. Skip Fingerhut entirely; it’s been closed to new applicants since October 2025, no matter what an older list elsewhere still says. If Fair-tier approval odds still feel like a stretch, or none of those 13 stores fit actual spending habits, the 5-card Good tier is the next realistic step up, not a downgrade.

If credit is too thin for any unsecured store card, including the Fair tier, the Amazon Secured Card is the practical near-guaranteed fallback, since its approval depends on the deposit rather than the score. Wards Credit and any other unverified catalog-credit option are worth reading about, but not worth applying for ahead of a card this site has actually vetted.

No card on this list, or anywhere else, is ever literally guaranteed — the CARD Act’s ability-to-pay requirement applies to every issuer with no exceptions. Do the approval-odds homework in our linked guide before applying, watch for deferred-interest promotions once a card is approved (our deferred interest guide covers how that trap works), and check our best store credit cards roundup if a side-by-side comparison of the strongest options would help narrow the shortlist further.