I’ve never had a credit card with fees.

I built up a great credit score with a single, no fee card, that I paid off each month. Total cost $0.

You don’t need an interest paying loan to have a good credit score.

I don't understand the US credit score at all. What's the predictive value of you paying off a mortgage based on you just shopping with a credit card? Sure if you can't pay your normal shopping cart, probably you shouldn't really be getting a mortgage, but the predictive value besides that seems lost on me. Surely a bank could just ask your payslip info and get a more accurate feel whether or not you are creditworthy?

I don’t follow.

Shopping with a credit card literally involves managing a line of credit.

You don’t see how that relates to creditworthiness?

You also believe purely income information is a better indicator of credit worthiness? It tells you almost nothing (which is why income plus all current expenses is used).

A mortgage is about the ability to pay back hundreds of thousands over an extremely long time period. Your normal shopping is a blip, and it makes barely any difference because normal people just use their credit card the same as if it was a debit one (the only difference you pay it off at the end of the month). So it doesn't tell me anything about your ability to handle real credit. What do I care that you pay off a 100-ish bucks a month by buying food? I don't think paying off your shopping cart is very impressive, and someone telling me "I've paid off my shopping carts for over 15 years" (which is what advice US people seem to throw around to use your credit card for) isn't going to impress me, yet this is what a company uses for important stuff? And at least employment status/income tells me something, rather than nothing.

I don't think you understand how the average person handles credit card debt.

Plenty of people fail to pay even monthly credit card debt. That a massive,massive signal to how they'd handle larger amounts of credit.

> Surely a bank could just ask your payslip info and get a more accurate feel whether or not you are creditworthy?

They do that, too. You have to provide all of your income data over the past like 3 years and explain any extra income (why did your parents give you $1000 a couple years ago?). Credit score is just one more datapoint, and I think it's more about your score being "not bad" (i.e. you didn't screw a previous creditor) than it is about it being "good."