Building Business Credit: The Three Bureaus and What They Track

Three commercial credit bureaus operate the major business credit files in the United States: Dun and Bradstreet, Experian Business, and Equifax Business. They are separate from the three personal bureaus (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion) that operate FICO and VantageScore on consumer credit. Each business bureau collects different data, runs different scoring models, and is used by different downstream credit-extending parties (commercial lenders, vendors offering trade credit, business-insurance underwriters).

Dun and Bradstreet and PAYDEX

Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) is the oldest and largest commercial credit bureau in the United States. Its core identifier is the D-U-N-S number, a nine-digit identifier issued to a business at no charge through D&B's standard application channel. The D-U-N-S is the entity tax-equivalent on the commercial-credit side: vendors and lenders use it to look up the entity's file on D&B's reporting system.

The PAYDEX score is D&B's flagship scoring product. PAYDEX runs from 0 to 100 and measures payment timeliness on the entity's reported tradelines. Per D&B's published methodology, a PAYDEX of 80 indicates payments are made on net terms (the standard expectation), 90 indicates payments are made an average of 20 days early, and 100 indicates payments are made an average of 30 days early. Below 80, the score reflects increasing degrees of lateness.

PAYDEX is dollar-weighted, which means a single large transaction paid late has more impact on the score than a single small transaction paid late. The implication: prioritising on-time payment on larger tradelines yields a stronger PAYDEX than uniform on-time payment across all tradelines. The score updates based on tradeline reports submitted by vendors and lenders that report to D&B.

Experian Business and Intelliscore Plus

Experian Business operates the Intelliscore Plus and Financial Stability Index scoring products. Intelliscore Plus runs from 1 to 100 and is a credit-risk score predicting the likelihood of seriously derogatory payment behaviour over the next twelve months. A higher Intelliscore corresponds to lower risk: 76-100 is low risk, 51-75 is low-to-medium, 26-50 is medium-to-high, and 1-25 is high risk. Experian publishes the methodology summary on its commercial site.

Intelliscore Plus combines tradeline payment history, public records (UCC filings, judgements, bankruptcies, liens), demographic and firmographic data (industry, time in business, employee count), and Experian's own Bankruptcy Plus and Days Beyond Terms metrics. The model is designed for use by lenders, vendors, and insurance underwriters making forward-looking decisions.

The Financial Stability Index is a separate score targeting bankruptcy risk over the next twelve months, scaled differently from Intelliscore. Some downstream users consume both scores; some consume only one.

Equifax Business

Equifax Business operates the Business Credit Risk Score, the Business Failure Score, and the Business Delinquency Score. The risk and failure scores predict different outcomes (delinquency vs business failure) on different time horizons; the delinquency score predicts severe delinquency over the next twelve months. Equifax publishes methodology summaries on its commercial site.

Equifax Business is the smallest of the three by market share but is consumed by certain commercial lenders and insurance underwriters that prefer its model. The data set overlaps substantially with D&B and Experian Business but is not identical; tradelines, public records, and firmographic data each flow into Equifax's scoring through bureau-specific pathways.

What each bureau reports on a card

Where a business card issuer reports to a bureau, the standard data points are the credit line, the current balance, the highest historical balance, payment history (on time or how many days late), and the account status (open, closed, in collection). Reporting cadence varies; monthly is most common for issuers that report at all, but quarterly and event-based reporting also occur.

Not every issuer reports to every bureau. Some issuers report only to D&B; some to Experian Business; some to all three; and many to none. For small-business cards, D&B coverage is the most common; Experian Business coverage is moderate; Equifax Business coverage is the least common. The CFPB card agreement database is the authoritative source for any specific issuer's stated reporting policy.

How business scoring differs from personal FICO

Personal FICO is a 300 to 850 score with a fixed methodology built primarily on payment history (35 percent), amounts owed (30 percent), length of credit history (15 percent), credit mix (10 percent), and new credit (10 percent). Business scoring uses different scales (PAYDEX 0-100, Intelliscore 1-100, various Equifax scales), different inputs (tradelines plus public records plus firmographic and industry data), and different downstream use cases (commercial credit, vendor terms, insurance underwriting rather than consumer credit).

Practical differences:

File age matters less. A business credit file can mature in months, where a personal credit file matures over years. The shorter timeline is partly because there are fewer business bureaus and partly because the data set is more concentrated.

The penalty for inactivity is smaller. A personal credit file with no activity stagnates and eventually thins out. A business credit file is more responsive to active tradelines and less penalised for periods of inactivity.

Public records matter more. UCC filings, business liens, judgements, and bankruptcies are publicly recorded and visible to business bureaus regardless of whether they appear on personal records. The business file is therefore broader in the negative direction than the personal file is.

Industry and firmographic data feed the score. Business scoring incorporates industry risk, entity type, employee count, and time in business as direct inputs. Personal FICO does not consider any analogue for an individual.

How to establish a business credit file

1. Form an entity and obtain an EIN. A sole proprietorship can begin building business credit with an EIN, but an LLC or corporation provides cleaner separation between personal and business credit identities.
2. Open a business bank account in the entity's name. A business operating account creates the deposit footprint that some bureaus consume as firmographic data and that some issuers use for entity-level underwriting. Keeping personal and business deposits separate is also the recommended IRS substantiation practice under Publication 583.
3. Obtain a D-U-N-S number. Free from D&B; takes a few weeks via the standard process. The D-U-N-S is the entity identifier most commercial counterparties expect on the business-credit side.
4. Establish two or three vendor tradelines. Open accounts with vendors that offer net-30 terms and report to one or more business bureaus. Common starter tradelines are office-supply vendors, fuel-card vendors, and certain commercial-grade telecom or utility accounts. Pay each on time or early to build a positive PAYDEX history.
5. Apply for a business credit card from an issuer that reports. Once the file has two or three established tradelines, a business credit card from an issuer that reports to one or more bureaus accelerates file development. The CFPB card agreement database publishes each issuer's stated reporting policy.
6. Pay all tradelines on time, and prefer paying early on D&B-reporting accounts. PAYDEX is dollar-weighted; large early payments lift the score faster than uniform on-time payment.

How to monitor business credit

Each of the three bureaus offers paid access to its own report and score. D&B's CreditSignal is a free monitoring product that alerts on certain changes; the full report and score require a paid subscription. Experian Business and Equifax Business sell direct access through their commercial portals.

Aggregator services such as Nav and CreditSafe consolidate reports from multiple bureaus into a single subscription. The aggregators are useful for owners who want to see the file from all three perspectives without subscribing separately to each bureau. The data they show is the same data the bureaus sell directly; the convenience is in the consolidation.

Reviewing the file at least annually is recommended practice. Tradeline errors, misreported delinquencies, and identity-mixing (where another entity's data is reported to the wrong file) all occur and are correctable through the bureau's dispute process.