I mean, not really. Here is an overview of how things work in some different countries: https://finmasters.com/what-countries-have-credit-scores/ https://finmas

I mean, not really. Here is an overview of how things work in some different countries: https://finmasters.com/what-countries-have-credit-scores/ https://finmasters.com/what-countries-have-credit-scores/ Absolutely, there are significant differences, and some are quite similar to us (Canada and the UK) others differ more significantly (France and Spain). But they all essentially have ways to record any black marks from your payment history and use that to determine your credit worthiness for new loan applications. This is exactly what I meant in my first paragraph - yes, it's absolutely the case that the US implementation has tons of problems, and I think it's fine to say these should be public or quasi-public entities (e.g. only the the country's central bank has this info, like in France), but in general, all of these countries use some sort of analogous system to credit bureaus to determine your relative risk profile.