After leveraging "Huabei" to test the waters of online small consumer loans, Ant Financial's financial credit ambitions have expanded again. In the latest Alipay wallet mobile client, in addition to the already online "Huabei", "Jiebei" also appears in the financial section. Different from "Huabei" which mainly serves Taobao buyers, "Jiebei" will mainly be used for transactions between external customers and is expected to become the core of offline expansion.
The latest version of the Alipay client shows that the "Credit Life" page under the Sesame Credit section has changed, adding new content such as finance, social networking, and people's livelihood. In the financial section, in addition to "Huabei", a product called "Jiebei" has been added.
"'Jiebei' should be launched soon, but specific issues such as product positioning, rates, and deadlines have not yet been determined." Although the relevant person in charge of Ant Financial refused to disclose more details, the use of open platforms, higher quotas, and focusing on offline may be the differentiated positioning of "Jiebei" from "Huabei" in the future.
Ma Tao, an analyst at Analysys International, said that the positioning of "Jiebei" may be different from "Huabei". "Huabei" is aimed at online shopping, cannot be cashed out, and has a smaller limit. For those users who have offline consumption such as decoration and buying cars, "Huabei" is obviously difficult to meet the demand. From this, it seems that the application channels of "Jiebei" are expected to expand offline, and the limit should be higher than that of "Huabei".
Relevant people from Ant Financial said that the product provider of "Jiebei" is not necessarily Ant Small Loan. "Credit Life" can connect various types of merchants and is not limited to Ant Financial.
This also brings more imagination to the upcoming "Jiebei". Some analysts believe that the fund provider of "Jiebei" may be P2P companies. Previously, Sesame Credit has reached strategic cooperation with P2P companies such as Yinhu.com to conduct credit assessment and post-loan tracking for credit borrowers through blacklist sharing, Sesame score assessment and other measures. It is logically feasible to use Sesame Credit Score as a basis for P2P platforms to select borrowers and provide them with a certain amount of loan business.
However, it is worth noting that the P2P platform itself is positioned as an information intermediary, not a capital investor. In this regard, a P2P industry insider said that currently some P2P companies use debt packaging to launch products, and the P2P platform uses its own funds to provide funds to multiple borrowers at one time. In this way, the debt is transferred to the P2P platform itself. Subsequently, the P2P platform launches products in a packaged form for investors to subscribe. This operation method is not illegal.
Ma Tao believes that the fund provider of "Jiebei" may be the online merchant bank that is under preparation. In his view, Ant Financial has the most comprehensive layout among Internet financial companies at present, and the new product "Jiebei" may be operated by companies under Ant Financial. According to previous assumptions, MYBank will have no physical branches and will not operate cash business. It will analyze personal credit through network data and complete lending business. Therefore, through Alipay’s real-name authentication + Zhima Credit score, it may be possible to realize the plan of MYbank’s pure Internet bank. "A banking license can make it easier for Ant Financial to engage in lending, payment and settlement and other businesses, but this requires communication with the China Banking Regulatory Commission and approval before it can operate," Ma Tao said.
Previously, Ant Financial had launched "Huabei", which is funded by Ant Small Loans and is mainly used by consumers for shopping on Tmall and Taobao. It can provide interest-free loans for up to 40 days. The credit limit is calculated based on the big data accumulated by Alibaba's e-commerce platform. The loan amount ranges from 1,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan. If the repayment exceeds the specified time, a daily interest of 0.05% will be charged.
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