Skip to main content [aditude-amp id="stickyleaderboard" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1636875,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,","session":"B"}']

Alibaba and Tencent to launch consumer credit rating services

Money
Image Credit: Shutterstock

China’s central bank yesterday issued a notice allowing eight Chinese private organizations, including Alibaba’s Sesame and Tencent, to prepare for the launch of their consumer credit rating services over a six-month period.

It’s no secret that Ant Financial Services Group, Alibaba’s finance arm, has been developing Sesame, a credit scoring service based on user profiles and the behavioural data Alibaba’s marketplaces has collected. Alipay, the online payment service under Ant Financial, has had more than 300 million users.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1636875,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,","session":"B"}']

One month after the Sesame’s website went live, Tencent announced it would roll out a similar system, intending to leverage the vast amount of data generated by its 800+ million monthly users.

Currently only the Chinese central bank, state ministries and local governments keep track of consumer credit records, but their data are not open to the public. There are not yet any FICO score-like services available in the country.

AI Weekly

The must-read newsletter for AI and Big Data industry written by Khari Johnson, Kyle Wiggers, and Seth Colaner.

Included with VentureBeat Insider and VentureBeat VIP memberships.

Both Alibaba and Tencent, in related moves, are building private banksThe website of Tencent’s WeBank was launched a week ago, but no offerings are available on the site so far. It has been reported that Alibaba’s venture is named MYbank.

This story originally appeared on TechNode. Copyright 2015

VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Learn More