The credit system is about to get rewired. Not with a press release. Not with a Fed rate tweak. This one’s buried in the fine print of S.1465, the Credit Access and Inclusion Act of 2025. It’s sitting in committee right now, but the effects are already bleeding into the ecosystem.
FICO confirmed it. Two new scoring models are rolling out this fall. FICO Score 10 BNPL and FICO Score 10 T BNPL. Both will incorporate Buy Now Pay Later loans. That includes Affirm, Klarna, Afterpay, PayPal Credit, and the rest of the checkout-split crowd. These aren’t fringe products. BNPL volume hit $179 billion in the US last year. Over 40% of Gen Z and Millennials use it monthly. That’s not a trend. That’s a credit layer.
Until now, BNPL loans didn’t touch your score. No hard pull. No revolving balance. No visibility. That’s over. FICO’s new models will aggregate BNPL usage and feed it into the score. Not as individual loans, but as a behavioral signal. Stack too many? Your score flags. Pay on time? You might get a boost. Miss a payment? It’s on the record.
The Credit Access and Inclusion Act takes it further. Section 2 opens the gates for utility, telecom, and broadband providers to report payment data to credit bureaus. That includes electric, gas, water, phone, and internet bills. The goal is to help the 45 million Americans who are “credit invisible” build a file. Rent and utility payments are often the only consistent financial history they have. Now those payments can count.
But Section 2(f)(4) is where the trapdoor sits. It says energy companies can’t report late payments if the customer enters a repayment plan. Sounds like protection. But there’s no restriction on reporting usage data. That means a household struggling to keep the lights on could still have their consumption patterns flagged. High usage during a repayment window could be interpreted as risk. That’s not a safeguard. That’s a loophole.
The bill doesn’t require companies to report. It allows them to. That means the data flow will be uneven. Some utilities will report positive payments. Others won’t. Some will report usage spikes. Others will stay silent. Consumers won’t know what’s being shared unless they pull their file. And even then, the bureaus aren’t required to disclose how the data is weighted.
The American Fintech Council backed the bill. So did four Republican senators. They’re calling it a tool for financial inclusion. And for some, it will be. Renters who’ve paid on time for years could finally get a score. But the same system that lifts one borrower could flag another for using too much electricity during a heat wave.
There’s no opt-out. If your utility reports, it’s in the file. If your BNPL provider shares data, it’s in the score. The models are already built. FICO says they’ll run side-by-side with existing scores. Lenders can choose which one to use. That means two applicants with the same financials could get different outcomes depending on which score is pulled. The credit file is no longer just about loans and cards. It’s about how you live. What you use. When you pay. And who decides to report it.
Sources
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1465