The History of Three Security Credit Amigos: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion

Before credit scores existed, lenders relied on personal trust. Shopkeepers knew their neighbors and could judge who would pay them back. As cities grew and people began borrowing from strangers, that kind of trust could not scale, and credit bureaus emerged to fill the gap.

Equifax started in 1899 in Atlanta as the Retail Credit Company, supplying merchants with reports on customers. It later expanded into insurance and employment data before renaming itself Equifax in 1975.

TransUnion began in 1968 as a railcar leasing company. It acquired a small credit reporting agency almost by accident, then abandoned railroads entirely once it saw the value of consumer data.

Experian traces back to 1820s Britain, where tradesmen shared notes on customers who did not pay. It entered the American market through acquisitions, most notably absorbing TRW's credit division in the 1990s.

These bureaus grew for a few clear reasons. Consumer credit expanded rapidly as stores and banks offered installment loans. Urban mobility broke down face to face trust between lenders and borrowers. New technology made it possible to store and share data on millions of people. And the introduction of the FICO score in 1989 gave lenders a standardized number built directly from bureau data.

Today Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion track the financial histories of nearly every adult in the country, a modern solution to the old problem of trusting a stranger with money.