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Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

> I’m from The Netherlands, so actually fairly close. I also know France doesn’t have a credit system as described, and wouldnt be surprised if that’s the case for a large part of the EU.

The Netherlands has the Bureau Krediet Registratie, which is pretty similar to the credit ratings in the US. (Arguably, the credit rating system in the US is slightly more forgiving than the BKR, but that's a separate matter - the Netherlands definitely does have this system).

France is actually the outlier for not having one - Germany and Spain both do, for example, as does the UK. And of course Canada, the US, and Australia have similar systems as well.

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The difference is that the BKR acts more like a blacklist: if you never have taken any loans you will never have a bad rating, whereas in the US you need to actively obtain and manage your credit to get a good rating.

> The difference is that the BKR acts more like a blacklist: if you never have taken any loans you will never have a bad rating

This is how credit ratings in the US work as well.

This is not true. For example, when I first moved to the US, I was unable to get a "real" credit card, much less a car or home loan.

I was effectively required to get a secured credit card to demonstrate my "ability" to repay "debt". After doing this for some time, I was able to get a normal credit card, with a far higher limit and no security.

It's a little farcical really, that my ability to pay back a few hundred dollars monthly granted me access to a credit line far in excess of my monthly income.

> This is not true. For example, when I first moved to the US, I was unable to get a "real" credit card, much less a car or home loan.

Yes, that's not because you had a bad credit score, but because lenders in the US are more conservative and are generally unwilling to lend money to a person who doesn't have a good credit score. This applies especially to people who aren't citizens, even if they have legal residence and work authorization. You didn't have a good credit score - or any score at all. That doesn't mean you had a bad rating. If you'd had a bad score, it would have been much worse that what you describe.

The original statement was that "if you have never taken any loans, you will never have a bad rating". This is true in both the Netherlands and the US (barring cases of fraud and identity theft, which occur in both countries).

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