Earlier this year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it had received many complaints against digital lenders who had signed out loans to people without their consent. Some of these loans had even been defaulted on, leading to unwarranted drops in the credit scores of those affected.
With so much of our private data online these days, it isn’t hard for fraudulent loan apps to use sensitive identification like PAN card numbers to issue non-consensual loans. On top of that, with identity thefts increasing, things can get worse quickly—and the next time you apply for an essential loan, you might be stonewalled because of your poor credit history.
To counter that, it’s important to stay on top of your credit report. CIBIL is where you can easily access your credit report, see your loan repayment history, and generally get a sense of what your profile as a borrower looks like. But the report can be too jargony sometimes, too hard to understand. Also, if you’re actively looking to improve your credit rating, you might have to repeat the process of downloading your reports every single time the report gets updated.
The app helps solve those problems.
From the stables of —the company behind , an Indian metal credit card startup—OneScore helps give you a complete 360-degree view of your credit profiles, right from your CIBIL score to a breakdown of your EMIs, repayment histories, and all the loans (via credit cards and BNPL products, along with bank loans) signed to your name—whether you’ve availed them or not.
Rated 4.5 stars out of 5 on the Google Play Store, this completely free app has one crore downloads. FPL Technologies claims it does not spam or display ads on the app, ever.
How it works
To get started on the app, you need to plug in a phone number linked to your bank accounts, your PAN card number, and your date of birth. Once that’s done, you’re in.
The home screen displays your CIBIL and Experian scores, prominently, and plots them on a graph to show you how they’ve changed over time.
Below that, is a quick, very easy-to-understand summary of your credit report, which shows you how regular you are with your repayments and EMIs, how much limit you have remaining on your credit cards, the type of loans on your account, any enquiries raised on your loans or credit card applications, among other things.
There are several quick links to blog posts around boosting your credit score and good loan repayment practices too which are super helpful if you’re just starting to build your credit profile.
Each of the sub-heads comes with an assigned score—perfect, fair, ace, poor—that gives you a quick overview, without going into too much detail, of the finer points on your credit report. For example, on my credit report, the ‘Profile’ heading showed me a “poor” rating—when I clicked on it, it told me I had ‘inconsistent contact information’ on one of my bank accounts.
Beyond just getting a read on your credit health, the app lets you track your score change every time it’s updated—helpful if you’re actively working towards improving your profile.
Our verdict
There’s much to appreciate about this app and the service it provides, free of charge that too!
The UI/UX is clean, simple and very efficient. It gets out of the way as you explore it.
The app is well built—no glitches, and ran very smoothly. The home screen is the only page so there’s no unnecessary navigation.
Your Experian and CIBIL credit scores get updated automatically every month, and the tips it shares to improve your scores are super helpful.
OneScore lets you raise queries for corrections and fixes from within the app, which is truly helpful. I also appreciated the depth of insights and the simple way it presented those insights.
What could’ve been better is the annoying OneCard ad the app flashes sometimes when you power it up. It’s mostly annoying because you can’t click out of it. You have to quit the app and restart again to access it. To be fair, once you’re in the app, the OneCard ad is just a small window that doesn’t bother you all that much. Also considering the app is free despite adding so much value, I didn’t mind the cross-selling.
It would’ve been good to have more credit bureau reports, such as from CRIF and Equifax, on the app, although the Experian and CIBIL scores are acceptable for most loan applications.
Some users pointed out that they weren’t able to delete their profiles on the app if they’d accidentally entered incorrect PAN card information. Others said their CIBIL scores didn’t update even after months of using the app.
I wish there was a way to download the credit reports, or at least navigate reports month by month, especially historical data.
Despite all this though, the app was helpful in giving me an overall, quick picture of my credit health in an easy-to-understand manner. And considering it’s free, there’s really not much to complain about. This is a definite must-have.
