Credit bureau.

In plain English

A credit bureau, also called a credit reporting agency, gathers information about how you borrow and repay money and packages it into your credit report. The three nationwide bureaus are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. They do not lend you money themselves; lenders and other companies send them your account data, and the bureaus sell that data back out to anyone with a legal reason to check it. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a bureau generally has to investigate a dispute you file within 30 days and correct or remove information it cannot verify.

01Why it matters

You did not choose to have a file at these companies, but the file follows you into every loan, lease, and sometimes job application, so knowing they exist is the first step to fixing what they get wrong.

02The math, step by step

You pay off a credit card and close it, but two months later you notice Experian still shows it as open with a balance, while Equifax and TransUnion show it closed. Because each bureau keeps its own file, you file a dispute with Experian directly. The bureau generally has about 30 days to investigate and correct it.

03What this is NOT

04Receipts

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