In the United States, each person has a credit score that is calculated by three large credit agencies. These agencies and their methods are opaque. Neither the buyers of this information nor the people who are reported on are allowed deep insight into how the score is calculated, nor are they able to update this information directly. A mistake by a credit agency can be devastating to someone's ability to finance a home or a car, costing a consumer valuable time and money. Nevertheless, if a consumer finds mistakes on their credit report, they must beg the issuer to update it, and they have few options if that organization refuses. Worse, those same issuers have proven bad stewards of the private financial information they collect. For instance, in 2017, Experian suffered a massive data breach that exposed the records of over 100 million people. If these agencies were replaced by a blockchain system and smart contracts, people would be able to see the rules and update records directly, without having to pay an intermediary that may or not be honest themselves.

Large companies have an advantage in the current marketplace: They can both afford to pay these third-party services for financial data, as well as the personnel and systems needed to track information themselves over time. Smaller companies are not granted such economies of scale, putting them at a competitive disadvantage and increasing their overhead, or even putting them out of business if they make a bad decision because they have less information. However, even larger companies stand to benefit, as the cost and expense of compiling this data add up for them as well. As more data concerning trust becomes public and automated by smart contracts, the playing field will level and, hopefully, will crowd dishonest actors out of the marketplace. This should result in increased confidence across the market, along with reduced overheads and, by extension, higher profits, lower prices, or both.