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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

You mean the US-style credit score, right? Because I can't imagine a country that has banks giving out loans without at least credit worthiness analyses that are essentially credit scores, but lazily computed. And lazily-computed credit score is still credit score. E.g. in Poland, we don't have "credit score", except that the bank will happily calculate it for itself whenever you ask for a loan, which means we have to keep our interactions with credits and debts in mind, the same way Americans do.

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The historical norm for credit has always been offering up possessions as collateral. You don’t need a complicated credit scoring system, or reliable enforcement mechanisms for debt & fraud, you just sell off the collateral if the customer doesn’t pay the loan.

This is exactly the function that pawn shops provide in the West, although their usage has dropped significantly since the introduction of consumer credit.

What is happening in China is that most things are pre-paid or have very low hard credit limits.

You often have to pay six months of rent in advance to rent. I know lots of people that have been cut off electricity or phone service but you can get it reconnected in hours or less if you pay the bill.

The one nice thing is that there are NO late fees, reconnection fees, overage fees, etc. You just don't get service.

Ouch. I couldn’t summon 6 months of rent, and I’m pretty comfortable economically.

That may be, but the most popular credit these days is probably mortgage loan, and I haven't heard of those being given on a collateral, at least not to regular people buying their first home. Same with consumer credit, so at this point I'm not convinced that most of the world really doesn't have (possibly lazy) credit scoring.

> the most popular credit these days is probably mortgage loan, and I haven't heard of those being given on a collateral, at least not to regular people buying their first home.

In my corner of the EU, banks require a guarantor (or even two!), plus a copy of your salary slips. And plenty of people are simply not approved.

Also, mortgages are implicitly backed by the home itself. In the worst case scenario the bank can claim the property back and sell it to recoup their losses.

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