Jeff Kauflin is a senior editor who leads Forbes’ fintech coverage, covering everything from digital banking and investing to payments and insurtech. He co-edits Forbes’ annual Fintech 50 and also writes about crypto. Jeff joined Forbes in 2016 and works in New Jersey.
The big credit bureaus’ moves undercut Tomo’s claim that it reports to the bureaus and means its credit-boosting service can’t work as it says it does.The three big bureaus are crucial to Americans’ credit histories.
If your payment data isn’t appearing in any of their records, you have little to no credit history.has learned. TomoCredit claims it can help boost consumers’ credit scores through features like opening a line of credit for them and reporting their rent and utility payments to the credit bureaus.about the difficulty of canceling its subscriptions and recently added an option to cancel to. Consumers have also said in online forums and interviews withthat Tomo’s credit lines don’t appear in their credit histories. Now there’s clear evidence that the bureaus Tomo claims on its website that it reports to aren’t accepting its information. In response to a list of facts and questions we sent to Tomo founder and CEO Kristy Kim about the bureaus ending their partnerships with Tomo, Kim said, “They are inaccurate,” but she failed to elaborate further or grant an interview. She added, “Tomo is filling the gap in the credit ecosystem by connecting good borrowers who happen to lack credit history and lenders. All three bureaus are great partners of Tomo as we all want to positive innovation to the industry benefits to consumers.” The five-year-old startup was last valued at $222 million in a 2022 fundraise, according to PitchBook, and has raised about $40 million in equity funding from backers including Morgan Stanley and Mastercard.The three big bureaus are crucial to Americans’ credit histories. If your payment data isn’t appearing in any of their records, you have little to no credit history, making it extremely difficult to get most credit cards, a personal loan, a car loan or a mortgage. As of today, Tomo still displays the Experian, TransUnion and Equifax logos on its website under text that reads, “Access credit building loan and tools to build your score with all three bureaus.” But Equifax has asked Tomo to remove the Equifax logo from its website, a spokesperson for the credit bureau says. Experian has done the same, according to a person familiar with the matter.by a personal finance company with access to consumer credit reports, the reports from the three bureaus show virtually no records of any lines of credit from Tomo starting in August 2024. That snapshot is starkly different from the situation earlier this year, when tens of thousands of Tomo credit lines appeared in the records of one or more of the bureaus. The data also suggests the bureaus have gone so far as to purge from consumers’ credit histories some of the information they had earlier accepted from Tomo. The bureaus typically don’t comment publicly on individual data furnishers like Tomo that report information to them, but an Equifax spokesperson confirmed that the company has “deactivated TomoCredit from our system.” The spokesperson also said, “Equifax carefully reviews all requests from prospective data furnishers to furnish data as well as regularly audits current data furnishers for quality, compliance and security.” We asked Experian if it has ended its relationship with Tomo and purged data, and a spokesperson declined to comment specifically on Tomo, saying the bureau “is committed to ensuring the information included in credit reports is as accurate as possible.” The spokesperson added, “As part of that process, we perform ongoing due diligence with each of our data furnishers to confirm the information provided adheres to our strict data standards.” A TransUnion spokesperson also wouldn’t comment on Tomo and said, “In general, we take the reliability of our data seriously and hold all furnishers to high standards in service of that work.”consumers have repeatedly said Tomo’s credit lines sometimes don’t appear at all in their credit history. Jasmine Burch, a 35-year-old engineer from Southern California, subscribed to Tomo’s service from September 2023 through April 2024, paying $79.99 a month for its VIP plan to try to improve her credit score. She says Tomo’s credit line appeared in her credit history from all three bureaus for just one month, October 2023, and never appeared again. Felisa Ware, a 55-year-old Michigan resident who subscribed to Tomo for several months in 2023, toldIt’s unclear precisely why the bureaus have ended their partnerships with Tomo, but financial services attorneys we spoke with say credit bureaus can terminate relationships with data providers or purge historical data for several reasons. If a company like Tomo has a high rate of disputes, where consumers are saying there’s an error in their credit history related to their Tomo credit line, that’s a red flag. Other warning signs are a company failing to respond to disputes or responding in the same way to all of them. Among the most extreme reasons to remove a data furnisher would be a company producing fake credit history data and reporting it to the bureaus, thoughfrom its ongoing examination of the credit bureaus, it included a point that demonstrates the regulatory pressure the bureaus are under to police data furnishers like Tomo. As an example of the “deficiencies” it found in furnishers’ compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and associated regulations, the CFPB wrote, “For several months, furnishers failed to respond to all or nearly all disputes, or responded to all disputes in the same manner. Despite observing this dispute response behavior by these furnishers, continued to include information from these furnishers in consumer reports.” The CFPB didn’t name any specific companies in its findings.
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