FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

Ok, do rent next.

Paying rent doesn't count towards your credit score (at least it didn't a decade ago when I was getting my mortgage). And it's a glaring signal of how the system isn't built for what it claims: evaluating your ability to pay obligations on time. No, the system is built to trap people in poverty and enrich the rentier class.

Landlords like the idea of incorporating rent payments into credit scores, since it adds extra incentive to pay on time. Or, phrased differently, extra punishment for failing to pay on time.

Framing the current default as a help to the rentier class is just silly.

The rentier class are indeed a major cause of stagnation and inequality in our economy, but they are innocent of this one.

Is having your payments reported to a credit bureau really a benefit to you to allow you to have a better credit or is it a collection activity intended to help the creditor collect?

The reason buy now pay it later is being added, is because those lenders are having trouble collecting, so they want to add it to the credit score so there is an additional consequence if they don’t get paid. It’s a collection activity, not something that’s designed to help the payor.

Adding rent is mostly a benefit to the landlord not to the poor people.

The shitty software my landlord used to use -- the Buildium / Realpage scum -- decided to put a popup on every rent payment trying to get me to pay the Realpage scum $5 to $10 to report the rent payment to the credit bureaus.

Have seen this first hand. E.g. tenants with a terrible credit score, but 36mo of proof on-time rent payments. They've always made their future payments (in my experience).

Just what we need, every sleazebag landlord who owns 3 apartments and thinks he's hot shit holding his ability to fuck your credit up over your head.

A popup? How? If you can't pay by cash or bank transfer then wtf are they doing?

The current default is that missing a rent payment can harm your credit score, but paying on time will never improve it.

https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/can-late-rent-pa...

This benefits the landlords for the reasons you outlined, and tenants must interact with the credit industry through additional (often predatory) means in order to build a credit history that may allow them to buy their own home. Further, landlords have an incentive against providing this positive feedback, as doing so makes it more likely that tenants would exit a relationship that is profitable to the landlord.

Realpage offers payments on their website and landlords typically pass on the service costs to their tenants in the form of a $5 “service fee” as itemized by Realpage. Compared to a $10 fee to get a cashier’s check to pay in person (because ACH is done by Realpage), you’re saving $5/mo. (Cash is generally not accepted because they don’t want to be storing cash on location.)

Thank you for explaining this issue in more detail.

Will the horrors never cease?