China’s New Lenders Collect Invasive Data and Offer Billions. Beijing Is Worried.<br />In a country that lacks reliable ways to tell who might be a good borrower, these lenders use artificial intelligence<br />and oddly personal data — like tracking how fast prospective borrowers type on their phones — to determine who will pay them back.<br />In November, the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, stopped companies and people from starting new online cash lending platforms.<br />"But they don’t really know how to change that because the data is already being used." Mr. Bai of the China Association of Microfinance added<br />that "some cash loan companies use all kinds of soft violence to press customers to pay their loans back." Please verify you’re not a robot by clicking the box.<br />Two years ago the central bank asked China’s most successful internet companies — including affiliates of the sophisticated online giants Tencent Holdings<br />and the Alibaba Group — to create their own credit ratings systems.<br />Its app — Yongqianbao, or "use wallet" in Chinese — helps it build a credit rating system based on 1,200 data points related to user behavior.<br />Even borrowers like Mr. Bai who don’t pay back — what Mr. Jiao calls a "controlled<br />delinquency" — help the company by providing data, the company says.
