It’s the same thing in the US. Credit cards are popular in the US because due to far higher payment processing, people in the US can earn lots of cash back or other rewards. Of course, many Americans also purchase things by actually using the credit on their credit cards and paying interest on it, but you can easily go through life never paying interest to a credit card company.
The numeric value known as a “credit score” is simply a number that someone calculated based on your history of re-paying debts. It can exist in the Netherlands or anywhere, I can even make up my own formula. It’s probably more popular in the US than elsewhere due to its efficiency to evaluate someone’s credit worthiness for a credit card and the US using more credit for regular purchases than elsewhere, but it really isn’t something devious or magical or legislated.
For example, a small retailer wants to offer it’s customers credit (i.e. lend them money), but they don’t have the underwriting staff or capability to analyze everyone’s credit history (from their credit reports). Then the small retailer may choose to simply purchase credit scores from a company that does analyze people’s credit history, such as the popular FICO score from the Fair Isaac Corportaion.
