It’s true that credit scores, based on personal credit reports, have been around for decades. And direct marketing companies have long ranked consumers by their socioeconomic status. But e-scores go further. They can take into account facts like occupation, salary and home value to spending on luxury goods or pet food, and do it all with algorithms that their creators say accurately predict spending.

A growing number of companies, including banks, credit and debit card providers, insurers and online educational institutions are using these scores to choose whom to woo on the Web. These scores can determine whether someone is pitched a platinum credit card or a plain one, a full-service cable plan or none at all. They can determine whether a customer is routed promptly to an attentive service agent or relegated to an overflow call center.

Federal regulators and consumer advocates worry that these scores could eventually put some consumers at a disadvantage, particularly those under financial stress. In effect, they say, the scores could create a new subprime class: people who are bypassed by companies online without even knowing it. Financial institutions, in particular, might avoid people with low scores, reducing those people’s access to home loans, credit cards and insurance.

It might seem strange that one innovator in this sphere has blossomed here in St. Cloud, a world away from the hothouse of Silicon Valley. It is called eBureau, and it develops eScores — its name for custom scoring algorithms — to predict whether someone is likely to become a customer or a money-loser. Gordy Meyer, the founder and chief executive, says his system needs less than a second to size up a consumer and to transmit his or her score to an eBureau client.

“It’s like gambling,” Mr. Meyer says. “It’s a game of odds, when to double down and when to pass.”

Every month, eBureau scores about 20 million American adults on behalf of clients like banks, payday lenders and insurers, looking to buy the names of prospective customers. An eBureau spinoff called TruSignal, also located here, scores about 110 million consumers monthly for advertisers seeking select audiences for online ads. Mr. Meyer says eBureau’s clients use the scores to answer basic business questions about their potential audience.