If you pay your cell phone bill or utility bills, it is likely that none of these bills are reported as positive on-time payments to the credit bureaus. Conversely, if the payment is late or account becomes delinquent, the credit bureaus will likely hear about it. Essentially, good payments cannot improve your credit score but your late payments can definitely hurt it. Crent is designed to furnish alternative data to all three main credit bureaus for you.
In the United States credit file, good and timely repayment of debt is classified as positive information while delinquencies are negative.
Still, an estimated 35 to 54 million Americans have insufficient credit information to qualify for mainstream credit.
Since you need credit to get credit, access to credit is a catch 22 for most Americans. Research suggests that the inclusion of alternative data in credit files can bring many of these individuals into the credit fold, because non-financial positive payment information (i.e. utility payments) may give credit agencies enough information to rate previously unscorable individuals known as the unbanked.
(source: Wikipedia)