Two years ago, Luke Bailey had what became a controversial app idea — a dating app called Score for people with good to excellent credit.
Launched just days before Valentine’s Day, the app required users to have a credit score of at least 675 to register. At the time, Bailey said he created the app to encourage partners to talk more about personal finance since doing so is often uncomfortable for many people.
“Fifty-four percent of people say a partner’s debt is a reason to consider divorce,” Bailey told TechCrunch. “Financial compatibility is quietly one of the most important relationship factors, yet no dating platform addresses it directly.”
The app had its fair share of critics, and many people indeed called it classist because of its focus on those who handle money well. Still, the app, which was supposed to be available for 90 days, became so popular that Bailey kept it around for six months. It amassed 50,000 users and made headlines worldwide for its premise.
Then, it went away, and all went back to normal in the world of dating. Until Friday.
Bailey told TechCrunch that he’s decided to officially bring Score back — for good, this time.
“We originally released Score to integrate financial responsibility into something people deeply value — love,” Bailey said. “When we shut it down, we assumed the conversation would continue without us. It didn’t.”
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Instead, he said people kept asking him why he shut it down. “Academics have even reached out wanting to study behavior impact,” he continued. “It became clear this wasn’t just a viral moment. It tapped into something unresolved in relationship culture.”
This time around, Score will be available on the iOS App Store (last time it was just a mobile app, he said, because he and his team built it so quickly). Bailey also said this version of the app will be more inclusive, having taken into account the feedback that it was too exclusive. “So now, everyone can join.”
There will be two tiers: the basic tier, where no ID or credit verification is required, and anyone can browse and connect. And then the verified tier, where members must verify their ID and credit score to unlock premium features. The app uses Equifax to verify both identity and credit scores, with users giving consent for the app to do so. It does only what Bailey described as a soft pull, so there is no impact to credit.
“We don’t store full credit reports or sensitive personal and financial data. We simply receive confirmation that someone meets the Verified criteria,” he said.
The verified plan includes features that let people see other members nearby, see who has saved their profile, send video intros to potential matches, and send messages to users before they’ve swiped back.
He’s still bullish on using credit scores, saying that it’s not a measure of wealth but rather one of consistency. “Banks look for the same thing in customers that we look for in relationships — consistency and reliability,” he said. “Dating apps measure attrition. We measure attrition plus accountability.”
Bailey said the app doesn’t store any sensitive data, doesn’t sell personal data, and secures everything using an encrypted infrastructure.
The last iteration of Score amassed a lot of data on its users, helping show how each generation has been affected by socioeconomic factors. For example, it found that millennial men had credit scores about 11% higher than those of women. But for Gen Zers, that gap was much smaller, with men having a credit score only 3% higher.
“We’ll be watching how that data [has] evolved,” he said.
The original Score was a U.S.-only experiment, he said, but this time, the company plans a global expansion, starting with Canada. Keep an eye out for some partnerships, too, he said.
“Financial behavior is one of the strongest predictors of life stability,” Bailey said. “We believe compatibility algorithms should reflect that.”
