Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) is tapping into its vast records on the online spending habits of its users for a new purpose — to provide credit ratings on consumers.
On Wednesday, Ant Financial Services (螞蟻金融服務集團), a company run by Alibaba founder Jack Ma (馬雲), announced the launch of the Sesame Credit Management Group (芝麻信用管理), a credit-scoring business that is to rely primarily on online data. Alibaba shares in some of Ant Financial’s profits through a contract.
Ant Financial wants to attract the millions of Chinese who lack established, traditional credit histories.
Chinese consumers are notoriously frugal, with household savings rates among the highest in the world for a large economy. Lack of access to credit among consumers and small businesses is one reason.
“They may have never obtained bank loans or applied for credit cards,” Sesame Credit chief data scientist Yu Wujie (俞吳杰) said in a statement. “However, they might be active Internet users who shop online a lot, e-pay their utility bills on time, have a stable residential status and have been using their mobile phone numbers for a long time. We will take these and other factors into consideration when assessing consumers’ creditworthiness.”
The availability of information on creditworthiness is another barrier to promoting consumer borrowing, which does not have robust rating systems such as the US’ FICO scores. As of September, only 436 million domestic credit cards were in use in China. While the People’s Bank of China maintains a credit reference center with 850 million people on its database, that information can be limited, and most of it comes from banks.
The new venture is the latest example of how Ma, 50, is shaking up China’s state-dominated financial system. Sesame Credit is one of eight new privately owned credit-scoring businesses that were given preliminary approval this month by China’s central bank. The Chinese Communist Party has been trying to decrease China’s reliance on debt-fueled investment as the economy’s main driver of growth, hoping to shift greater importance to consumer demand.
To determine credit scores, Sesame Credit is to partly use the spending and savings behavior of Ant Financial’s more than 300 million real-name registered users — equivalent to nearly a quarter of China’s population. It also plans to tap into data on 37 million small businesses that buy and sell goods on Alibaba’s shopping Web sites, including Taobao.com (淘寶), and Tmall.com (天貓).
It is to have access to payment histories on Alipay.com Co (支付寶), an online payment service similar to eBay Inc’s PayPal finance unit, as well as information about investors in Yu’E Bao (余額寶), an online money market fund that pays higher returns than a bank savings account and has about 150 million users.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
FACTORY SHIFT: While Taiwan produces most of the world’s AI servers, firms are under pressure to move manufacturing amid geopolitical tensions Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) started building artificial intelligence (AI) servers in India’s south, the latest boon for the rapidly growing country’s push to become a high-tech powerhouse. The company yesterday said it has started making the large, powerful computers in Pondicherry, southeastern India, moving beyond products such as laptops and smartphones. The Chinese company would also build out its facilities in the Bangalore region, including a research lab with a focus on AI. Lenovo’s plans mark another win for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who tries to attract more technology investment into the country. While India’s tense relationship with China has suffered setbacks
RSS