Acima is a lease-to-own company, not a lender — and that difference decides what it can and cannot put on your credit report. Acima itself says it plainly in its own disclosures: its product “is not a loan, credit, or financing.” So when something labeled Acima, TBOM/ACIMA, or a collection tied to an Acima lease shows up on your report, the first question is which of its three possible footprints you are looking at — because two of them are routine, and the third is where the errors live.
The three ways Acima can touch a credit report
A soft inquiry when you apply for a lease. Acima states that it “obtains information from consumer reporting agencies during a lease application” and that it uses a soft pull from TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. A soft inquiry is visible to you on your own report but is not sent to lenders and does not affect your score. If an Acima lease application shows as a hard inquiry you never authorized, that is a real problem, not a cosmetic one — our post on unauthorized credit inquiries explains why.
The Acima Classic Credit Mastercard — a separate product with full reporting. Acima also markets a credit card, and this one is ordinary credit: Acima’s card page states it is issued by TBOM (The Bank of Missouri, Perryville, MO) and serviced by Concora Credit, that approval places a new account and a credit inquiry on your report, and that payment history on the card is reported to all three major bureaus. That is why the tradeline on your report may not say “Acima” at all — it often appears under the bank’s name. We cover those furnisher names separately: TBOM on your credit report and Concora Credit on your credit report.
A collection after a lease goes unpaid. The lease itself does not build credit — on-time lease payments are not furnished to the bureaus. But an unpaid lease balance can be sent to a collection agency, and the collector can report it. This is the footprint that generates disputes: the federal complaint record for Acima Credit, LLC in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s public database runs to roughly 3,900 complaints, and the two issues consumers raise most are “attempts to collect debt not owed” (683 complaints) and “incorrect information on your report” (743) — the CFPB’s consumer complaint database is public and searchable.
Where Acima entries go wrong
The recurring patterns in those complaints map onto familiar Fair Credit Reporting Act problems. A lease that was paid out or returned shows as an open balance with a collector. A balance is inflated by lease charges the consumer disputes. The same lease appears twice — once under the original account and once under a debt buyer. Or a collection reports against the wrong person entirely, because lease applications carry thin identifying data. Each of these is a dispute the credit bureaus and the furnisher are legally required to investigate.
What the law requires once you dispute
Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681i, once you dispute an item with a credit bureau it must conduct a reasonable reinvestigation, free of charge, generally within 30 days. Under § 1681s-2(b), the company that furnished the information — whether that is a collector reporting an Acima lease balance or the card’s issuing bank — must investigate what you disputed, review the information you provided, and correct or delete anything it cannot verify. A furnisher that keeps verifying a false balance after a proper dispute is exactly the kind of defendant the FCRA’s damages provisions exist for.
What to do now
Pull all three reports. The entry may sit on one bureau and not the others, and the card tradeline may appear under TBOM or Concora rather than Acima. Match the entry to the paper. Your lease agreement, payoff confirmation, or return receipt is the document that decides the dispute. Dispute in writing with the bureau showing the entry, enclose the documents, and keep copies of everything, including the response. If the entry comes back “verified” while your documents say otherwise, that is the moment to involve a lawyer rather than send a fourth dispute letter.
Talk to us
If an Acima lease you paid, returned, or never signed is sitting on your credit report as a collection — or a TBOM/Acima card account is reporting a balance that is not yours — send us the report and whatever paperwork you have, and we will tell you whether there is a claim. We handle Fair Credit Reporting Act claims against furnishers and credit bureaus nationwide.
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Published by The Kim Law Firm, LLC — about attorney Richard Kim. Last updated August 2026.