History of Dun & Bradstreet: DUNS Number Timeline

History of Dun & Bradstreet

Last updated: August 2026

Long before "DUNS number" meant anything to app developers or exporters, Dun & Bradstreet was solving a much older problem: how do you trust a stranger with credit? Here's the nearly 200-year history behind the company — and why it explains so much about how the modern DUNS system works today.

Why This History Actually Matters

It's easy to treat "DUNS number" as just another bureaucratic form field — something Apple or a government portal demands before you can move forward. But the reason platforms and governments trust it so readily traces directly back to how old and established Dun & Bradstreet actually is.

D&B isn't a startup that built a credit database last decade. It's a company whose core idea — a centralized, third-party way to judge whether a business can be trusted with credit — predates the telephone, the light bulb, and the modern corporation itself. That depth of operating history is exactly why its identifiers carry so much default institutional trust today.

If you're here to actually register for a DUNS number rather than learn its backstory, see our Getting Started guide instead.

Timeline: Key Milestones

From a single credit-reporting office in Manhattan to a global data company spanning hundreds of millions of businesses.

1841

The Mercantile Agency founded

Lewis Tappan starts the world's first formal credit-reporting business in New York, using a network of correspondents to assess merchants' creditworthiness.

1849

The Bradstreet Company is founded

A rival credit-reporting firm launches in Cincinnati, eventually becoming R.G. Dun's chief competitor in the mercantile-credit business.

1859

Robert Graham Dun takes over

The agency is renamed R.G. Dun & Company and expands its correspondent network across the growing United States.

1933

R.G. Dun and Bradstreet merge

The two long-standing rivals combine to form Dun & Bradstreet, consolidating decades of competing credit data into a single company.

1963

The DUNS number is introduced

D&B launches the Data Universal Numbering System to standardize business identification, decades after the company's founding.

1970s–1990s

Global expansion & product diversification

D&B grows internationally and builds out additional products — PAYDEX scoring, D&B Ratings, and broader business intelligence tools.

2000s

D&B Hoovers and digital tools emerge

D&B expands into sales intelligence and prospecting products, later folded largely into the D&B Connect brand.

Today

A global data company

D&B maintains data on hundreds of millions of businesses worldwide, and its DUNS number remains the default business identifier requested by governments, platforms, and institutions globally.

1841

1841: The Mercantile Agency

Dun & Bradstreet's origin story starts with a simple, old problem: 19th-century merchants routinely extended credit to trading partners hundreds of miles away, with no reliable way to know if those partners were financially trustworthy. Lewis Tappan solved this by founding The Mercantile Agency in New York in 1841 — widely regarded as the first formal credit-reporting business in the world.

The Agency built a network of local correspondents — often lawyers or prominent local businesspeople — who reported on the reputations and finances of merchants in their area.
Subscribers (usually larger merchants or suppliers) paid for access to these reports before deciding whether to extend credit to a given business.
This correspondent-network model is the direct ancestor of how D&B still compiles data today — just replacing handwritten local reports with automated data feeds.

RIVALS

Two Rivals: R.G. Dun and The Bradstreet Company

For nearly a century, the two halves of today's "Dun & Bradstreet" operated as competitors, not partners. After Robert Graham Dun took control of The Mercantile Agency in 1859, it was renamed R.G. Dun & Company and grew into one of the dominant credit-reporting firms in the United States.

The Bradstreet Company, founded separately, built its own competing correspondent network and credit-rating publications.
Both companies published printed reference books rating the creditworthiness of businesses across the country — an early, physical predecessor to today's digital D&B Rating.
Decades of parallel competition between the two firms shaped much of the methodology D&B still uses to assess business risk.

1933

1933: The Merger That Created Dun & Bradstreet

In 1933, R.G. Dun & Company merged with the Bradstreet Company, combining two of the largest credit-reporting rivals into a single organization: Dun & Bradstreet. This consolidation brought together decades of separately gathered credit data under one roof for the first time.

The merger happened during the Great Depression, a period when reliable credit information was especially valuable to businesses trying to manage risk.
Combining two competing correspondent networks gave the new Dun & Bradstreet a far larger and more comprehensive dataset than either company had alone.
This 1933 merger is the direct predecessor of the company that, three decades later, would introduce the DUNS number.

1963

1963: The DUNS Number Is Introduced

It's worth noting how much later the DUNS number itself arrived compared to the company's founding — D&B operated as a credit-reporting business for over a century before it introduced the standardized 9-digit numbering system in 1963.

The Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) was created to give every business a single, standardized identifier — solving the problem of businesses being referenced inconsistently across different records and reports.
This standardization is what eventually made the DUNS number attractive to governments and large institutions as a universal way to identify vendors and contractors.
Today's requirement for a DUNS number from platforms like Apple, Google, or government procurement systems is a direct descendant of this 1963 standardization effort.

TODAY

D&B Today

Modern Dun & Bradstreet operates as a global data and analytics company, maintaining records on hundreds of millions of businesses across the world. Its core products — DUNS numbers, PAYDEX scores, D&B Ratings, and full Credit Reports — all trace back to the same original goal from 1841: giving one party a trustworthy way to judge another's business reliability.

D&B remains a private company — not a government agency — despite how widely governments rely on its identifiers.
Its nearly two-century operating history is one of the biggest reasons institutions default to trusting D&B data over newer alternatives.
For how each of D&B's modern products relates to your DUNS number today, see the Dun & Bradstreet Explained pillar guide.

Key point: D&B's age and scale are exactly why third parties can't shortcut or bypass it — there's no faster, equally trusted alternative for global business identification.

Frequently Asked Questions About D&B's History

When was Dun & Bradstreet founded?

Dun & Bradstreet traces its roots to 1841, when Lewis Tappan founded The Mercantile Agency in New York. The modern company took shape in 1933, when R.G. Dun & Company merged with the Bradstreet Company.

Why was The Mercantile Agency created in 1841?

The Mercantile Agency was created to help merchants judge whether it was safe to extend credit to distant trading partners they had no personal knowledge of, using a network of local correspondents to report on business reputations.

When was the DUNS number system introduced?

The DUNS number system was introduced in 1963, decades after the company's 1841 founding and its 1933 merger, specifically to standardize business identification on a global scale.

Is Dun & Bradstreet older than most credit bureaus?

Yes. Dun & Bradstreet is one of the oldest continuously operating credit-reporting companies in the world, with roots predating most consumer credit bureaus by decades.

Did R.G. Dun and Bradstreet exist as separate companies before merging?

Yes. R.G. Dun & Company grew out of the original Mercantile Agency, while the Bradstreet Company was a separate competing credit-reporting business. The two merged in 1933 to form Dun & Bradstreet.

Why does D&B's long history matter for businesses today?

D&B's long, continuous operating history is a major reason governments and platforms worldwide trust its identifiers and data by default — it predates nearly every alternative business identification or credit-reporting system in use today.

Why This History Actually Matters

Timeline: Key Milestones

1841: The Mercantile Agency

Two Rivals: R.G. Dun and The Bradstreet Company

1933: The Merger That Created Dun & Bradstreet

1963: The DUNS Number Is Introduced

D&B Today

Frequently Asked Questions About D&B's History

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