I'm not sure where you're referring to, but virtually all modern economies have an equivalent of credit bureaus for the simple reason that a modern economy cann

I'm not sure where you're referring to, but virtually all modern economies have an equivalent of credit bureaus for the simple reason that a modern economy cannot function without it. The main difference is that they largely just expose the person's history and let the lender decide, as opposed to trying to distill the whole history into one score to rule them all. Edit: the Dutch bkr, for instance, has recently been sued for charging users to access their database of payment histories. This is important because that record is provided to companies wishing to make credit decisions about an individual. It's also noteworthy that the Dutch in general don't really go in for credit cards the way Americans do, so they interact with that part of the financial system less. That in turn makes for much less interesting "credit reports".