When a creditor reports to the credit bureaus, they are reporting to usually one of the big 3 credit agencies, Trans Union, Experian and Equifax.  The creditors may report to all, two or just one of the bureaus, and each one of these bureaus calculate a credit score differently, so the scores from one bureau will vary from one to another.  However, what they all do is have a variation in one form or another of the FICO score.  The FICO score is from the Fair Isaacs Corporation (now known as the FICO Corporation) and they developed the technology that is utilized to score credit across all three credit bureaus.  They also provide many other financial solutions for banks and financial institutions world wide.  According to their website, Fair Isaacs began in the 1950s but it wasn’t until 1989 that the first general purpose FICO score debuted.  It is the number one score used when a creditor is evaluating your credit report when deciding whether or not to grant credit.