1. How has the legacy credit reporting system become more of a barrier than a bridge, especially for individuals with unconventional financial profiles?

Traditional credit systems were designed around institutional credit products—loans, credit cards, and mortgages. But today, billions of people participate in the economy through alternative channels: freelance income, mobile payments, crypto, informal commerce, and peer-to-peer finance. These financial behaviors often go unrecognized by legacy bureaus.

As a result, over 6.7 billion consumers worldwide lack a traditional credit history but still need a trusted starting point. FreshCredit® allows users to generate verified reports using real-time financial data they already control. This opens up access, increases trust, and ensures providers can evaluate applicants based on relevant and timely signals—not outdated templates.

2. Can you explain how centralized ownership of credit data has created systemic obstacles, particularly for underserved and underbanked communities?

The scale of the issue is clear:

• 1 in 4 people will experience identity theft.
• Over 36% of credit reports contain errors significant enough to impact financial decisions, affecting 5–25% of applicants.
• More than 76% of all complaints filed with the CFPB are directed at the three major credit bureaus.
• In contrast, over 4,400 other financial institutions combined receive just 24% of complaints—making the bureaus 4,500 to 5,000 times more likely to receive complaints per entity than the average institution.

Even compared to the largest banks like Chase (which receives around 4% of total complaints), each bureau sees 8–10 times more.

FreshCredit® addresses this structurally. Reports are created and held by the user in a local embedded database, backed up in an encrypted cloud environment, and only accessible through Microsoft Entra Verified ID. This model restores control to the individual while reducing institutional liability, exposure, and reputational risk.

3. What makes blockchain technology a natural fit to disrupt the credit reporting industry?

Blockchain is the ideal infrastructure for verifying the authenticity of data without exposing or centralizing that data. But FreshCredit® doesn’t store full reports on-chain—that would recreate the privacy problems of existing systems.

Instead, each version of a report is hashed and timestamped to the blockchain. This cryptographic fingerprint allows providers to validate that a report is original, unaltered, and issued with consent—without needing to query a central system or trust a third party. It builds integrity directly into the workflow.

4. How does distributing credit data through blockchain redefine the idea of financial identity and empowerment for consumers?

FreshCredit® transforms credit from something done to the consumer into something done with them. Users verify their identity, generate their own reports, and control when and how that data is shared.

Because the data is locally stored, and the blockchain hash proves it hasn’t been modified, this model allows financial identity to be portable, secure, and user-directed. Consumers can demonstrate verified creditworthiness even without a legacy history, while providers benefit from cleaner, faster, and more reliable data exchanges.

It’s not about decentralization for its own sake—it’s about distributing control in a way that benefits all stakeholders.

5. What safeguards does blockchain offer against the two biggest threats in credit reporting today—identity fraud and data breaches?

FreshCredit® neutralizes both threats by re-architecting the system from the ground up:

• Identity fraud is prevented through Microsoft Entra Verified ID, ensuring only authenticated users can generate or share reports.
• Data breaches are mitigated by removing the centralized vault. Reports are stored in local embedded databases, with encrypted cloud backups accessible only to the user. There’s nothing centralized to attack or exploit at scale.

Each report version is also hashed to the blockchain, allowing instant detection of tampering. This provides institutions with high-assurance verification, without the risk of storing or managing sensitive customer data.

6. FreshCredit® removes the need for consumers to navigate institution-led processes to access their own credit information. How exactly does this work?

Instead of requesting access from a bureau or waiting for a third-party response, FreshCredit® users generate their own report instantly after verifying identity and linking accounts. The report is stored securely on their device and backed up in the cloud. Sharing is permissioned and cryptographically signed by the user.

For institutions, this means faster onboarding, cleaner compliance, and reduced liability. For consumers, it means clarity, control, and zero delays.

Importantly, this streamlined process also helps bridge the financial literacy gap. By reducing the number of steps between identity verification, data connection, and setting up payments or future obligations, FreshCredit® makes it easier for users to understand how their actions impact their financial identity. Users don’t just participate—they learn and gain confidence throughout the process.

7. How does your hybrid blockchain model eliminate the reliance on third-party validation when assessing creditworthiness?

FreshCredit® enables institutions to validate a report at the edge, without needing to query a central system or rely on outside validators:

• The user connects financial data sources (e.g., Plaid, Dwolla).
• A report is generated, signed, and hashed to the blockchain.
• The provider receives the report directly from the user and verifies its integrity by matching the blockchain hash.

This eliminates third-party friction, improves data freshness, and ensures end-to-end visibility for providers—without compromising user privacy or control.