Dun & Bradstreet (PAYDEX)
From AltData.wiki, The Alternative Data Encyclopedia
Dun & Bradstreet (PAYDEX) is the commercial credit score product of Dun & Bradstreet Holdings, an American company that provides commercial data, analytics, and insights for businesses.[3] The PAYDEX score measures a business's past payment performance on a scale of 1 to 100, based on payment experiences submitted to Dun & Bradstreet's Data Cloud by suppliers and vendors.[1][2]
Dun & Bradstreet traces its origins to the Mercantile Agency founded in New York in 1841 and maintains a database of more than 500 million business records worldwide.[3] Its scores and ratings are widely consulted by lenders, suppliers, and corporate procurement teams when deciding whether to extend credit or contract with a company.[1]
What It Does
Dun & Bradstreet collects payment experiences, firmographic information, and corporate linkage data on businesses, and converts them into standardized credit scores and ratings that other organizations can use to gauge risk and financial health.[1] A supplier can consult these analytics before extending trade credit, a bank before offering a loan, and a large corporation before admitting a vendor into its supply chain.[1]
The PAYDEX score, the company's best-known metric, is roughly analogous to a personal FICO score for businesses. It is a dollar-weighted indicator of whether a firm pays its bills on time, ahead of schedule, or late.[2]
Data and Methodology
The PAYDEX score ranges from 1 to 100, with 80 and above considered low risk. Scores from 0 to 49 indicate a high risk of late payment, 50 to 79 moderate risk, and 80 to 100 low risk.[1]
The score is calculated from Trade Experiences: records of payment experiences submitted by suppliers and vendors, subject to Dun & Bradstreet's review, verification, and approval process. These records can include overdue debts and accounts sent to collections as well as on-time and early payments; unreported payments are not considered.[2]
Alongside PAYDEX, the company computes the Delinquency Predictor Score and Failure Score on 1-to-5 scales for future delinquency and financial stress risk, the Supplier Evaluation Risk rating predicting whether a supplier will become inactive within twelve months, a Maximum Credit Recommendation derived from size, industry, and payment history, the composite D&B Rating combining company size and balance-sheet information, and a Cyber Risk Rating assessing suppliers' vulnerability to cyber threats.[1]
Products
Businesses can review their own scores through D&B Credit Insights or monitoring products, while subscribers to D&B Credit Intelligence can pull comprehensive reports on other companies, including scores, payment histories, ownership information, and legal events such as bankruptcies, judgments, liens, lawsuits, and UCC filings.[1][2]
Beyond credit products, Dun & Bradstreet sells sales and marketing solutions, master data management, and data licensing built on its Data Cloud of business records, identified through the D-U-N-S Number numbering system the company introduced in 1963.[3]
Delivery and Pricing
Products are delivered through web subscriptions, one-off report purchases, API and data-licensing agreements, and partnerships. Revenue comes from subscription products, business information reports, data licensing, strategic partnerships, and concierge services.[3]
Specific pricing is not published across the catalog; small-business products such as single credit reports and monitoring plans are sold online, while enterprise contracts cover bulk data feeds and integrations.[1]
Buyers and Use Cases
Buyers include banks and lenders setting loan terms, suppliers extending trade credit, insurers setting premiums, landlords screening tenants, and corporations vetting vendors, some of which require low-risk Supplier Evaluation Risk ratings from their supply chains.[1][2]
Business owners also use the data proactively: paying bills on time, ensuring suppliers report payments, keeping company information current, and submitting trade references are described by the company as ways to improve scores and credibility.[1][2]
History
Dun & Bradstreet traces its history to July 20, 1841, when Lewis Tappan founded the Mercantile Agency in New York City to provide centralized credit reporting. The firm became R.G. Dun & Company in 1859 and merged with competitor John M. Bradstreet's agency in March 1933 to form Dun & Bradstreet.[3]
The company devised the D-U-N-S Number in 1963, acquired Moody's in 1962 before spinning it off in 2000, and acquired Hoover's in 2003.[3] An investor group led by CC Capital, Cannae Holdings, and Thomas H. Lee Partners took the company private in February 2019; it re-listed on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker DNB on July 1, 2020.[3]
In January 2021 the company acquired European data firm Bisnode for approximately US$818 million, and in May 2021 it moved its global headquarters to Jacksonville, Florida.[3] On March 24, 2025, Dun & Bradstreet agreed to be acquired by Clearlake Capital in a transaction valued at US$7.7 billion including debt; the acquisition was completed that August, and Stephen Tulenko succeeded Anthony Jabbour as CEO in September 2025.[4]