Xu Meng, a girl born in the 2000s, opened the photo show as usual, fixed a selfie, and prepared a circle of friends. On the page where the photo retouching ends, between the two regular options of "Poster Design" and "Help me retouch the photo", a strange option comes into view – "Borrow Money".
She opened it curiously, and the words "Special Loan Platform for Meitu Users" popped up on the screen, asking for authorization of a mobile phone number, and showing the maximum loan amount: 200,000 yuan. There were three introductions on the page, and she was stunned: "Why does a photo editing software want to lend me money?"
In this era of digital services at your fingertips, many people have discovered that it is no longer just those "serious" financial apps that want to lend you money. When you take a taxi, the taxi platform will ask you if you need a "credit"; when you surf social media, there is a "borrow money" entry in your wallet; when you browse short videos on a short video platform, a "borrow with confidence" promotional video suddenly appears in front of you… From social networking, entertainment, travel to life tools, major platforms are competing to play the role of "creditor" or "intermediary".
Borrowing should be a major matter that requires careful consideration, but now it has become a "simple operation" that may occur in any consumption or even entertainment aspect. People may not fully realize what a click to save a few dollars or an "interest-free installment" option actually means and what kind of chain reaction it may have.
To borrow or not to borrow has become an inevitable question that must be answered.
Nowadays, you can find the entrance to “borrow money” on any photo editing app.
How are we being borrowed invisibly?
The penetration of Internet credit often starts with a tiny click.
Li Yang, a college student, was watching a popular drama and clicked on the "Get 1-month VIP for free" button on a certain video platform. The page then jumped to an off-site lending platform, requiring him to fill in his ID card and mobile phone number to apply for a credit limit. In order to save more than 20 yuan in membership fees, he needs to become a "borrower" first.
Chen Xin, a "post-95s" girl, once almost "owed" a taxi platform 40,000 yuan in order to receive 30 15-yuan taxi coupons. "I usually exit immediately when I see this kind of page, but I was in a hurry that day and didn't think much about it when I saw a discount on fare collection." Chen Xin recalled. After the taxi ride ended, an eye-catching discount prompt popped up on the payment page. She subconsciously clicked, swiped her face, and verified, all in one go.
It wasn't until the last step of "confirming whether to get a loan" that she suddenly woke up – she had almost incurred tens of thousands of yuan in debt for a discount of dozens of yuan. “The process is so smooth that you don’t even realize it’s a loan,” Chen Xin said.
Chen Xin’s experience is not unique. Turn on your mobile phone, from ordering takeout, taking a taxi, watching videos, to editing pictures, listening to music, and even recharging your campus card, the entrance to "borrowing money" is like a capillary, embedded in almost every digital life scene. "Xinmin Weekly" reporters randomly tested more than 20 commonly used applications on mobile phones covering shopping, entertainment, travel, tools and other types, and found that each one has a conspicuous or hidden "loan entrance".
Apps for food, clothing, housing and transportation include Ele.me’s “Xingyongjin”, Mango TV’s “Mangli·Haodai”, etc.; even completely unrelated utility apps are joining in the fun, such as WPS’s “Kingsoft Finance”. The 2025 statistical results of a financial sector leader from a consulting agency show that 70% of the top 100 traffic giants have started financial realization.
In 2017, Lei Jun predicted at Xiaomi’s annual meeting: In the future, all business giants will be Internet companies and financial companies. Now it seems that his prediction is coming true.
If the direct "borrow money" button still has a certain degree of recognition, then "installment payment" is a more secret and daily embedding of credit. It is "perfectly" integrated into the consumption action itself, blurring the boundary between consumption and debt.
"I never thought 'installment' and 'loan' were the same thing before." Guo Yuan, who had recently applied for a housing loan, told reporters that it was not until she saw the loan records in her personal credit report that she was shocked to realize that the installment payments she was accustomed to in her daily life would be shown as personal consumption loan records from consumer finance companies.
Reporters found that this misunderstanding is extremely common: many consumers regard "instalment" as a payment "benefits" provided by the platform, rather than a formal credit behavior, and do not understand the long-term impact it may have on personal credit records.
It can be seen that in the digital age, complex financial decisions are reduced to a few casual clicks in a carefully designed interactive process. Some people in the industry put forward, "Financial services should be like chewing gum, I will be wherever the cashier is."
Has this “deep scenario-based” financial concept led to excessive marketing and induced lending in practice? Li Nan, associate professor at the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said in an interview with Xinmin Weekly that there is no problem with this concept of focusing on user needs when applied to payment services, but it is very problematic as a loan marketing concept. In actual operations, some platforms use algorithm push, limited-time discounts, pop-up window induction and other methods to create a sense of urgency and false demand, and further induce users to borrow irrationally.
Why do platforms compete to be “creditors” or “intermediaries”?
"The end of the universe is Tieling, and the end of the platform economy is lending." This joke came from netizens, but it pointed out a typical routine of the platform economy – "burn money in the early stage and lose money to make money, and after acquiring customers, rely on the monopoly position to make profits."
Li Nan further analyzed in detail the business logic of "burning money to acquire customers – monopoly realization". "These Internet platforms initially attract users through money-burning subsidies, forming a network effect. Once the user scale reaches a critical point, the platform forms a monopoly. But the problem is that relying solely on information service charges cannot cover the huge initial money-burning costs. So, how to realize cash? Lending has become a 'perfect' way to make profits due to its high rate of return."
In April 2021, the People's Bank of China, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange and other financial management departments jointly conducted supervision interviews with 14 online platforms engaged in financial services. The main problem is to embed small and micro loans and consumer loans in the payment scene, and package the loans as convenient payment methods to induce users to use them.
Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Consumer Rights Protection Law Research Association of the China Law Society, believes that in terms of monetization methods, not all apps can launch self-operated lending products, which are mainly divided into two models: one is that the platform has its own financial license and directly lends to earn interest differentials. The platform uses its own user consumption data and behavioral data to carry out precise credit granting and earn interest and installment fees. "The annualized interest rate of formal consumer loans is usually between 15% and 24%. After deducting capital costs and operating costs, the profit rate can reach more than 30%." Chen Yinjiang said.
The other is to assist loan cooperation and provide secondary diversion, which is a more “lightweight” model. For platforms that do not have financial licenses, such as Meitu Xiu Xiu and Hello Bicycle, they only need to cooperate with banks and licensed consumer finance companies to be responsible for diverting traffic. The platform directs users to financial institutions and divides them according to the "number of clicks" and "loan amount". It can usually extract 30% to 50% of the loan interest. Hello's "Zhen You Qian" is a typical loan assistance model, and its partners include Zhongyuan Consumer Finance, Shanxi Merchant Consumer Finance, etc.
Li Nan pointed out, “Most of the current loan assistance models have very big problems. The core problem is that these loan assistance institutions or small loan companies use themselves or related platforms to divert traffic, take the funds of cooperative units (often small and medium-sized banks) to lend, and hardly bear the principal of the loan, but decide who to lend to, how much to lend, and how much to charge. Interest. This is a typical 'moral hazard', that is, loan decision makers do not bear the risk of bad debts but can earn interest, so they obviously have no incentive to review the borrower's repayment ability and control credit risks, but they have unlimited incentives to lend as much money as possible as quickly as possible, which ultimately leads to predatory lending."
This "no capital and profit" business model forms the cornerstone of profits. The company's financial report data directly confirms this: In the first half of 2025, the net profit of Ctrip's small loan company soared 132.58%, with a net profit of 44.29 million yuan.
Some of these profits are "regulatory arbitrage" because these institutions are doing the same lending business as commercial banks, but they are not subject to the same supervision as commercial banks to control their risks. This is why the financial regulatory authorities require small loan companies to lend more than 30% of their own funds, and require lending institutions not to make actual lending decisions.
The "risk outsourcing, profit retention" model is the essential reason for the barbaric growth of consumer loans. Li Nan also said that platforms often use algorithms that understand you better than yourself to make borrowing money "irresistible."
An algorithm engineer who has worked in the financial departments of several Internet companies revealed: "The interest-free ads that pop up when you watch short videos, the text messages that say 'Congratulations on getting an exclusive credit', and even the cash-out red envelopes that pop up when ordering takeout are all no accidents. There is a complex model behind this. To briefly describe my job, it is to determine how much red envelopes to send, so that it is easier for you to borrow money."
"We don't know the specific names of the netizens on the other side of the screen, but we know the behavior track behind the user ID." The engineer further explained that the platform can calculate the approximate income and expenditure status through the frequency, category and amount of consumption. Once the algorithm determines that you may be "lack of money", the push will start.
For platforms that do not have a financial license, such as Hello Bicycle, they only need to cooperate with banks and licensed consumer finance companies to be responsible for diverting traffic.
From convenience to trap, what are the risks?
The pervasive lending has quietly changed some people's consumption habits and financial structure.
Lin Yue, a 32-year-old literary worker, showed reporters the repayment reminder calendar on her mobile phone. It is densely marked with the repayment dates of 8 different apps. Viewed individually, any debt seems "innocuous": the monthly repayments range from a few hundred yuan to just over a thousand yuan, and most of them are interest-free installments, which seem to be completely within the coverage of her monthly income. They may seem insignificant, but they are like countless small pipes that continue to drain her cash flow, leaving her financial status in a sub-healthy state for a long time.
Lin Yue said: "I don't feel anything about each payment, but it adds up to thousands of yuan every month. Sometimes I can't figure out how much I owe."
This "shared debt" phenomenon is spreading among young people. According to a report released by the Financial Center Information Network, the average consumer credit debt of young users reaches 18,000 yuan, and 30% of the debt exceeds their monthly income by 5 times (the industry risk threshold is 3 times). In 2024, the non-performing loan rate for young users in the consumer finance industry will reach 2.8%, an increase of 0.6 percentage points from 2020, and the non-performing loan rate for "loans to support loans" users will be as high as 8.5%.
Lawyer Zhu Pingsheng, a partner at Shanghai Junyue Law Firm, analyzed the compliance boundaries of platform behavior from a legal perspective. He pointed out that many platforms currently hide their “borrowing entrances” behind interfaces such as “Get Coupons”, “Interest-Free Installments” and “Instant Taxi Discounts”. Users are “loaned” without knowing it. This behavior is suspected of infringing on consumers’ rights to know and make independent choices.
In addition to interest, users may also bear high "guarantee fees", "service fees" and "consulting fees" when borrowing money, causing the actual annualized interest rate to far exceed 36%. Zhu Pingsheng pointed out that these fees are charged in the name of "credit enhancement services", which is a disguised act of raising interest rates. "The regulatory red line clearly stipulates that the comprehensive financing cost of customers cannot be higher than 24%. Platforms avoid supervision by splitting fees and charging multiple parties, which is essentially taking advantage of legal loopholes."
Regulators have taken notice of the chaos. On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2026, the State Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau, together with the State Administration for Market Regulation and the People's Bank of China, conducted interviews with six travel platform companies. Yantai Jian pointed out three core problems in the cooperative lending business between banking platforms and financial institutions: misleading marketing, insufficient information disclosure, and lack of consumer rights protection.
Recently, in order to maintain the order of the personal loan market, protect the legitimate rights and interests of financial consumers, and improve the quality and efficiency of financial services, the State Administration of Financial Supervision and the People's Bank of China jointly issued the "Regulations on Expressed Comprehensive Financing Costs for Personal Loan Business" (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations"), which will be effective from August 1, 2026. There are 11 articles in the "Regulations", which are within the framework of the existing loan business information disclosure regulatory system, detailing the coverage, operation methods and links of personal loan business interest information disclosure, requiring lenders to display comprehensive financing cost express tables to borrowers, clearly disclosing personal loan interest costs, and effectively promoting the implementation of personal loan business interest fee information disclosure requirements.
Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Consumer Rights Protection Law Research Association of the China Law Society, suggested that from the perspective of consumer protection, the design of the payment interface should follow mechanisms such as "strong prompts" and "secondary confirmation." "Any operation involving borrowing should remind consumers in a prominent way and obtain clear confirmation from consumers. Consumers' operating habits cannot be used to set the lending option as the default option."
Li Nan, associate professor at Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, put forward more systematic suggestions from the two perspectives of financial supervision and improving the financial literacy of the entire population. She believes that, first of all, financial supervision should strictly inspect and control the licenses and leverage ratios of online lending/small loan institutions, and ban those lending institutions that are actually lending/defrauding loans under the banner of financial technology; secondly, starting from college students, we should gradually promote the improvement of financial literacy among high school students, newcomers to the workplace, retired people, etc.
She suggested that consumers should live within their means, buy necessities according to their income level, do not blindly compare and chase trends, and try to avoid borrowing for consumption; if they must borrow money, they should apply directly at a financial institution with a formal license. When applying, you need to calculate the total cost of the loan plus interest. In addition, personal credit record is everyone's most valuable asset. Once there is a default or breach of trust, it will affect future employment, work, buying a house, buying a car, etc. Do not take on debt easily.
After all, there is no free lunch in the world – this simple truth is still the most important rule of survival in the digital maze woven by algorithms.
