Guidance for people the US credit system misreads.

• No credit pulls

  We never check your credit. Reading your report requires nothing from any bureau, hard or soft.

• No SSN, no date of birth

  We ask only whether you have a Social Security Number, never the number itself. We do not collect your date of birth or full account numbers, and we ask you to redact them from anything you upload.

• We never apply on your behalf

  If you follow a recommendation, you apply directly with the provider yourself. Decisions about whether and where to apply are yours alone.

• Your information is not handed to lenders

  We do not sell your information, and we do not share it with any lender or financial institution for their own purposes. If an introduction ever involved sharing your information, it would happen only after you explicitly opt in to that specific transfer.

These commitments are written into our Terms and Privacy Policy, not just this page.

Some providers pay Merit a referral fee if you open or fund a product after following a link in your report. Three rules keep that honest:

• Every paid relationship is disclosed next to the recommendation it relates to, in the report itself.
• Guidance is ranked by fit for your situation, not by what a provider pays. Reports regularly recommend providers that pay us nothing.
• Sometimes the right answer is to not apply anywhere yet, and we say so, even though that pays us nothing at all.

Merit is built by three builders who have each navigated the US credit system from the outside, operating as MeritFi Technologies, Inc., a Delaware company.

We came to the US as international students, to Harvard Business School and MIT, with years at Morgan Stanley and Blackstone and graduate training in credit risk between us. None of it counted here. One of us arrived with five years of UK credit history and was declined for a basic card; the only yes was a credit union card with a $500 limit. To have a credit score at all he needed an SSN; to get an SSN he needed a job; so he refereed college soccer. When he later shopped a student loan refinance through the big comparison sites, rejection letters arrived from lenders he had never chosen, and his inbox and mailbox filled daily with “pre-approved” offers from companies he did not know existed. He had typed his information into a few websites. The system turned it into a product.

Merit is what we wished existed: one place that tells you the truth about your options before you hand your data to anyone, and stays on your side after. Many of the lender facts in our reports come from our own applications and our own rejection letters.

If any of this sounds like your situation, or you want to check something we have claimed, write to us: hello@meritfi.co

Is this free?

Yes, always for you. Merit is paid by some providers when a recommendation genuinely fits and funds, never by you.

Do you check my credit?

Never. No hard pulls, no soft pulls, no SSN. Your score range is whatever you tell us, and your report is built from your situation, not from a bureau file.

Will lenders see my data?

No. Your information stays with Merit and the service providers that run our infrastructure. When you act on a recommendation, you go to the provider directly; nothing is transmitted for you.

What happens after I submit?

A person reads your case. Your written report lands on your dashboard within 1–2 days: where to apply first, what may block you, and what to consider avoiding.