In the late nineteenth century, modern institutional lenders such as banks began to expand into the lives of ordinary and middling people, as well as into the firmament of small and medium enterprises. When the Banco Nacional de México (Banamex) opened its doors in 1884, it hired the American credit-rating agency R. G. Dun to appraise the creditworthiness of people and businesses. The bank needed clients, including people and businesses to whom it could lend money, and it used Dun’s services to find these potential debtors. Dun offered a new solution to the trust problem in credit relations: the credit report. Chapter 3 analyses risk and trust by examining this major shift in economic history, showing how the credit report as a form of bureaucratic economic information began to replace older face-to-face trust mechanisms. Analysing approximately 125 credit reports on people and businesses from the 1880s to the 1920s, the chapter examines changing ideas about creditworthiness as the modern credit economy took root. It argues that financial exclusion was baked in from the start, and that the power struggle between debtors and creditors changed when bankers succeeded in wedging a bureaucratic report between them