As cities developed and populations increased, the size and volumes of business transactions grew. Needless to say, this meant that the possibility of credit grantors losing their money also increased, so they began to request references from credit applicants. Credit grantors soon came to realise that it would be easier to have credit information stored by a neutral party so that every credit grantor could obtain quick and easy access to the information centralised in one place.

This realisation paved the way for the introduction of credit bureaux, which started operating in the USA in the 19th century. The demand for consumer credit increased considerably after World War II when the goods and services that had been unavailable during the war years were marketed again. This led to a rapid increase in credit programmes, card plans and other credit offerings as businesses began to use credit as a sales tool. The use of credit as a sales tool has become extremely popular in virtually every service and industry. While it has boosted sales across the board it has lead to many individuals being caught in the proverbial debt trap. Retailers would do well to educate their customers in the prudent use of credit because in the end it is they who end up with the bad debts.

During the second world war the credit bureaux only stored information on businesses and consumers who did not meet their credit obligations. It was the storage of this type of information that led to the term "blacklist" being applied to credit bureau operations. Because of risk management and predictive innovation by the 1980s, however, credit bureaux started storing positive repayment behavioural information and the advanced state of technology allowed for credit profile information to be engineered and evaluated in such a manner that it could be used to predict future payment performance. Thus the term "blacklist" is now a misnomer and cannot be applied to credit profile information.