Consumer Advocates Warn Against Using Schufa’s New App ‘Bonify’

Whether it’s a rental contract, buying a car, online shopping or a mobile phone contract: Schufa provides information on how solvent and creditworthy customers are. The company is now offering an app via a subsidiary that you can use to call up your own Schufa score – free of charge. But consumer advocates advise consumers against giving the new app “Bonify” access to their account. “That sounds tempting,” says Felix Flosbach, digital law expert at the North Rhine-Westphalia Consumer Advice Center, “but we take a very critical view of the registration requirements.” For identification, the app asks for ID card or account access. “If consumers use account access for identification purposes, they also provide permanent insight into sales over the last 90 days. Although Schufa is not currently allowed to use this data to assess creditworthiness, the biggest hurdle in storing the account data has already been cleared.”