Two years ago, Luke Bailey had a controversial app idea – a dating app called Points 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 sign up. At the time, Bailey said he created the app to encourage colleagues to talk more about personal finances as doing so is often uncomfortable for many people.
“54 percent of people say that a spouse’s debt is a reason to consider divorce,” Bailey told TechCrunch. “Financial compatibility is one of the most important aspects of a relationship, yet no dating site addresses it directly.”
The app has had its fair share of critics, and many people actually call it classist because of its focus on those who manage money well. Still, the app, which was supposed to be available for 90 days, became so popular that Bailey kept it for six months. It has gathered 50,000 users and made headlines around the world with its foundation.
Then, it went away, and everything went back to normal in the dating world. Until Friday.
Bailey told TechCrunch that he’s decided to officially bring the score back — for now.
“We originally launched Score to bring financial responsibility to something people value most – love,” Bailey said. When we closed it, we thought the conversation would continue without us.
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Instead, he said people kept asking him why he locked it up. “Academics have reached out wanting to study the impact of behavior,” he continued. “It was clear that this was not the most dangerous time.
This time, Score will be available in the iOS App Store (the last time it was a mobile app, he said, because he and his team are building it very quickly). Bailey also said that this version of the app will be more inclusive, as he considered the response to be more exclusive. “Now, everyone can join.”
There will be two stages: a basic stage, where no ID or credit verification is required, and anyone can browse and connect. Then it’s the verified section, where members have to verify their ID and shopping score to unlock premium features. The app uses Equifax to verify both identity and credit scores, with users giving permission for the app to do so. It only does what Bailey describes as a soft pull, so there is no liability impact.
“We don’t keep full credit reports or sensitive personal and financial data. We just get confirmation that someone meets the Guaranteed criteria,” he said.
The verified program includes features that allow people to see other members up close, see who has saved their profile, send video intros to potential matches, and send messages to users before they swipe back.
He remains committed to using credit scores, saying they are not a measure of wealth but rather consistency. “Banks look for the same thing in customers that we look for in relationships – consistency and reliability,” he said. “Dating apps measure obsolescence. We measure change and accountability.”
Bailey said the app doesn’t store sensitive data, doesn’t sell personal data, and secures everything using an encrypted infrastructure.
The last iteration of the Score collected more data on its users, helping to show how each generation was affected by socioeconomic factors. For example, it found that millennial men had credit scores about 11% higher than women. But for Gen Zers, that gap was much smaller, with men having only 3% more debt.
“We will be looking at how that data is [has] it appeared,” he said.
The original result was a US-only test, he said, but this time, the company plans to expand globally, starting with Canada. That being said, look at some relationships.
“Financial behavior is one of the strongest predictors of life stability,” Bailey said. “We believe that parallel algorithms should reflect that.”
