From my extremely naive understanding, obtaining credit and low rates is, in general, much easier in the US than other places. So it makes sense to me that it has “artificial” tools to help determine risk. How do other countries handle this and provide the availability that can be found in the US?
In Scandinavian countries there are registries of your income (from the tax authority), your debts (including buy now pay later which are technically flexible loans) and any bad debts you have that have gone to debt collection. No history of previous balances, repayments, how long you've had a credit card, etc... Companies use this to come up with a score, either themselves or a company like Bisnode will do it for them. So basically it's a simpler calculation based mainly on current situation than history.