As companies that maintain consumer credit records rush to sell their wares directly to consumers online, a company called iPlace Inc. has developed its own proprietary credit score separate from, and possibly competitve with, the Fair, Isaac & Co. score that most lenders use and is selling it for $3.95 a pop on one of its Web sites.
Consumers have been thirsting for online access to credit reports and actual credit scores, and iPlace is one of a host of companies that are trying to take advantage of this interest. While several, including iPlace, are selling or giving away reports from the three major credit bureaus online, only iPlace has created its own scoring model, similar to the Fico score, and begun selling it.
iPlace, which sells products for all three credit bureaus, came forward in January with its version of a credit score, which it is offering on one of its numerous Web sites, www.Qspace.com. Fair, Isaac and Equifax Inc. will be selling the traditional Fico scores through the Web in a joint venture that is supposed to be up and running by the end of March, but iPlace is hoping it beat them to the punch.
The Qspace personal credit score can be had for an extra $3.95 with the purchase of an online credit report for $7.95. The score is available on two scales: a standard three-digit scale of 400 to 900 and a more user-friendly scale of 0 to 100. An accompanying report lists credit history details that are hurting or helping the score.
Stuart Siegel, president and chief executive officer of Langhorne, Pa.-based iPlace, called his companys Qspace score a Fico clone, and said there is room in the market for several models.
The score we created is meant to be comparable to a Fico score, he said. Its like canned goods: Theres a generic product and then theres a branded one like Del Montes. Ours is sort of a generic Fico. There are uses for both.
Not surprisingly, Fair, Isaac and its partner, Equifax, say their soon-to-be-released offering of actual Fico scores will be far more useful to consumers.
iPlace and perhaps several others are offering their own types of credit scores, but were the one offering the actual Fico score, said Equifax spokesman Dave Mooney.
Two days after iPlace announced its own credit score product, Equifax and Fair, Isaac issued a joint release saying that they would make actual Fico scores (Equifaxs data plugged into Fair, Isaacs algorithm) available to consumers sometime in the first quarter.
iPlace has reported that Equifax recently invested $5 million in the company, and has a contract to develop and market credit products together. Mr. Siegel hinted at an arrangement with Equifax whereby iPlace could also make Fico scores available. All I can say is keep your eyes open, he said.
Consumers using the service should also keep their eyes open. iPlace is testing an option in which, in addition to giving consumers copies of their credit reports, the company stores data from the reports to create refined consumer profiles used for marketing purposes.
Robert Wheeler, the companys chief privacy officer, insisted that iPlace does not pass customers personal data along to third parties. We collect some very serious information, he said. Were not going to share that.
However, people who get their credit reports through iPlace are likely to be customers of financial institutions that have plugged iPlaces tools into their own Web sites. Since those companies are not third parties in this scenario, iPlace can share the credit report-based profiles, information the company is hoping to profit from.
Mr. Siegel said banks and credit card issuers would benefit from the service by being able to nab all those Web users who normally get away. This is a great way to capture information about your visitors instead of just having them look and leave, he said.
iPlace has set up or purchased numerous Web sites that give away or sell information to consumers about their creditworthiness, including www.freecreditreport.com, www.HomeRadar.com, www.iplace.com, www.qspace.com, and www.consumerinfo.com. Another company, Worthknowing.com, is giving away free Trans Union credit reports.
iPlace was formed through the February 2000 merger of eNeighborhoods Inc., which provides demographics and home resale price information, and ConsumerInfo.com Inc. Two months later iPlace bought QSpace Inc. to create a leading provider of infrastructure to some of the Internets largest service organizations. The 200-employee company has satellite offices in Orange, Calif., and San Francisco.
iPlace, which reported in June that its yearly revenues were $23.6 million, says more than 50,000 affiliate Web sites depend on it to deliver credit scoring information to their customers. It has deals with Yahoo, Microsoft Corp., Intuit Inc., Cendant, Wells Fargo & Co., NextCard Inc., CBS MarketWatch, E-Loan Inc., MemberWorks, Freddie Mac, Equifax Inc., Juno, EarthLink, and others.
Camille Lepre, a spokeswoman for San Francisco-based NextCard, said its offer to applicants for free credit reports through a cobranded Web site with ConsumerInfo.com has had a good response. But despite the popularity of the free report, which comes with a trial subscription of a credit monitoring service, NextCard is not marketing the iPlace score product to its customers.
Were still testing the credit report offer, Ms. Lepre said.
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