Metro 2 format
Also known as: Metro 2, Credit Reporting Resource Guide (CRRG)
Metro 2 is the standardized data format that creditors and collectors (furnishers) use to report your accounts to Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Every line on your credit report begins as a Metro 2 field — including the Date of First Delinquency that sets the 7-year clock.
Last updated:
Metro 2 is the industry-standard electronic format that data furnishers — banks, card issuers, lenders, and debt collectors — use to transmit account information to the three nationwide credit bureaus each month. It is defined in the Credit Reporting Resource Guide (CRRG), published and maintained by the Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA), the trade group of the bureaus. Consumers never file anything in Metro 2, but everything on a credit report originates as a Metro 2 record, which is why understanding the format is useful the moment something on your report is wrong.
A handful of Metro 2 fields carry outsized weight for consumers. The Date of First Delinquency (DOFD) is the field that anchors the seven-year reporting clock under the FCRA, so an inflated or reset DOFD is the mechanism behind illegal re-aging. The Account Status and Payment Rating fields encode whether an account is current, past due, charged off, or in collection. The Special Comment and Compliance Condition Code fields carry flags such as 'XB', which marks an account as disputed by the consumer under the FCRA — a code that should appear while a dispute is open and whose absence can itself be a reporting error.
The format matters for disputes because furnishers have a legal duty of accuracy. Section 623 of the FCRA (15 U.S.C. 1681s-2) and Regulation V (12 CFR part 1022) require furnishers to report accurate information and to investigate disputes. When a specific field is wrong — a DOFD that does not match the original delinquency, a balance still reported on a discharged debt, a missing dispute flag — citing the precise Metro 2 field in a dispute is more effective than a vague complaint, because it points the furnisher and the bureau at the exact data element that must be corrected or deleted.
One honest caveat: the full CRRG specification is sold by the CDIA and is not freely published, so field-level detail reaches consumers mainly through legal sources such as the National Consumer Law Center rather than the spec itself. You do not need the full manual to benefit. Knowing that your report is built from discrete, individually-disputable fields — and that the DOFD, status, and dispute-flag fields are the ones that most often go wrong — is enough to write a sharper dispute and to recognize when a furnisher has reported something the format does not actually support.
- How to dispute an error on your US credit report — and win The Fair Credit Reporting Act dispute process — bureau portals, the 30-day investigation, documentation strategy, and how to escalate via the CFPB.
- Credit card charge-off: 180 days past due + 7 years (15 U.S.C. 1681c) Both clocks verified: charge-off at 180 days past due is an FFIEC bank rule the CFPB echoes; removal comes 7 years + 180 days after first delinquency (§1681c).
- How to find the date of first delinquency on your report Locate the date of first delinquency on your credit report, decode each bureau field label, and reverse-engineer the DOFD with statutory math.
- Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA): What It Is and Your Rights What the FCRA requires from credit bureaus, the dispute timeline, 7-year and 10-year rules, permissible purpose, and how to enforce your rights.
- Is re-aging debt illegal? What resets the 7-year clock Improper re-aging pushes a debt off your credit report later than the law allows. How the 7-year clock works, what resets it, and how to fix it.
Educational content only. finbarrow is an independent editorial publication, not a licensed financial advisor, broker, tax preparer, or attorney. Verify rates and terms with the issuer or relevant regulator. See disclaimers.