Hey. It’s Brady again.
Alipay is one of the quintessential fintech apps in China. It doesn’t just handle payments; it also hosts mini programs and has other services bundled in, such as loans. Like Tencent’s WeChat, it’s a super app.
Or, more accurately, that should have been stated in the past tense. Regulators are slicing apart Alipay so that Ant’s consumer lending business lives in a separate interface, one that will incorporate processes controlled by a joint venture where state-backed firms hold a significant cumulative stake.
This is, as far as we know, the first unbundling of a super app. There’s justification for the move—a lender shouldn’t be issuing credit reports for its own loans business.
Zoom out a bit and you’ll see that this process also severs tech companies from the user data that they have been mobilizing to generate profits. That data is now under the purview of the state, and fintech firms that are in the lending business expect their revenues to sag.
Jiaxing had the full story. Check it out.
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