credit-reporting
(4)
TransUnion
The quiet third name on your credit report runs a billion-consumer data engine. Here is how a 1968 railcar spinoff became a Tru-branded machine for deciding who gets to borrow, rent and buy.
Equifax
Most people meet Equifax as a credit score. Its larger business is the invisible machinery that helps decide who gets a mortgage, a job, a benefit or a second look - rebuilt on a $3 billion cloud platform and shadowed by the breach that changed the company.
Experian
Experian built its name by telling lenders who was likely to repay. Now it is trying to turn that privileged view of financial life into a daily consumer utility - and a trust layer for an economy increasingly run by software agents.
MeridianLink
MeridianLink is a California-based financial technology company that builds cloud software helping banks, credit unions, and consumer reporting agencies originate loans, open accounts, and verify credit data. Its flagship platform, MeridianLink One, connects consumer lending, mortgage origination, account opening, data verification, and collections into a single system used by roughly 2,000 financial institutions. Founded in 1998, the company went public on the NYSE in 2021 and was taken private by Centerbridge Partners in a roughly $2 billion deal completed in October 2025.