Creditsafe Opens Up Businesses’ Financial Trade, Payments Data

Business intelligence company Creditsafe is enhancing its credit information database with a focus on business financial data, the company announced Tuesday (May 15).

The company said it is opening up access to financial trade payment data, which includes credit and financial performance information of U.S. businesses. Data points include information on business leases, commercial credit cards and term loans, the company noted. The information can be used by Creditsafe customers to enhance the underwriting process when they are making decisions to grant credit to their own customers.

“While business credit reports and scores are traditionally put together using a variety of public and private information covering business demographics and company-to-company trade payment data, the addition of payment data showing not just how a business pays its bills, but how it pays its term loans, commercial cards and other debts, takes our report to another level,” said Creditsafe America and Asia-Pacific CEO Matthew Debbage in a statement.

“To be honest,” he continued, “any credit manager or business owner who makes a credit granting decision without viewing this data first is actually cheating themselves and their business by not taking the opportunity to see the whole picture.”

According to Debbage, Creditsafe provides enhanced insight into financial data of companies considered to have a “thin credit file.”

“We believe this increase in data availability is a complete game-changer,” he added.

A report from small business community site Manta published in 2016 warned that there is a “major knowledge gap” when it comes to business owners’ understanding of business credit scores. Nearly three-quarters of nearly 3,000 businesses surveyed said they were unaware of what their business’ credit score is. Further, nearly 60 percent said they were unaware of where to go when looking for their business’ credit score.

The most common consequence for a poor business credit score is getting turned down for a loan, Manta noted.