Can you pay off a Discover personal loan early?

You can get Discover personal loan pre-approval through the Discover website. Discover pre-approval allows you to see your odds of approval for a personal loan from Discover, as well as your potential interest rate, and the process will have no impact on your credit score.

How to Get Discover Personal Loan Pre-approval... read full answer

• Go to the Discover website.
• Click on Check Your Rate.
• Enter the loan amount, loan purpose, your name, home address, email and phone number.
• Click Continue.

Once you receive your Discover pre-approval status, you can choose whether or not to actually submit an application. Getting pre-approved does not mean you're guaranteed to be approved if you apply, but your approval odds will be very high.

If you want to consider more options first, you can try out WalletHub's free personal loan pre-approval tool, which checks for pre-approval with multiple personal loan providers at the same time.

Yes, Discover does a hard credit check before finalizing your loan, which can negatively impact your credit score. This credit report inquiry will likely drop your credit score by about 5 to 10 points, but you'll be able to get back on track with a few months of on-time payments.

Discover's hard inquiry will stay on your credit report for two years, but it won't affect your credit after one year, and the impact may subside before then. To see how your individual credit score may be affected by a hard inquiry, you can use the credit score simulator on WalletHub.

It's worth noting that some people may be uncertain about whether Discover does a hard inquiry because there's only a soft inquiry during the pre-qualification process. Soft inquiries do not impact your credit score. But that's just the first step, and a hard inquiry is required when you officially apply.

If not having a hard inquiry is important to you, lenders that don't do a hard pull at all include Integra Credit, NetCredit and Opploans.

It is not very difficult to get a personal loan from Discover because they require a credit score as low as 660+ for approval. Other Discover requirements include being at least 18 years old, being a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, and having enough income to afford monthly loan payments.

Discover Personal Loan Requirements

• Minimum credit score: 660+ credit score
• Minimum Income: $25,000+ per year minimum income
• Age: 18+ years old
• Residency: U.S. citizen or permanent resident
• Identification Type: SSN

Once you make sure you've met all the requirements for a Discover personal loan, you should have a good chance of approval. However, the exact interest rate you receive will depend on factors such as your credit score, income and debt.

You can use WalletHub's free pre-qualification tool to see if you're likely to get approved and what rates you could get. Plus, it won't hurt your credit.