蚂蚁金服限制其消费贷款产品利率
Alibaba’s finance affiliate has banned consumer-loan products that charge annual interest rates above 24 per cent from its marketing platform. The step is the latest sign of how tighter regulation is reshaping China’s once-freewheeling internet lending industry. Online consumer lending has boomed over the past year. Small-loan companies that lend online using their own capital have largely replaced peer-to-peer lenders as the main source of online consumer and small-business loans, following a regulatory crackdown on P2P. Ant Financial, Alibaba’s finance affiliate, offers its own consumer loans but also distributes loans from other companies through Alipay, its online and mobile payments service. The move to delist high-interest loans from Alipay’s “Lifestyle” platform comes days after a multi-agency task force on internet finance suspended issuance of new licences for online consumer loan companies. “Our inspections discovered that products recommended by a few merchants on Lifestyle have problems such as interest rates that exceed the legal limit and inappropriate collection methods,” Ant Financial said. The company added that it would continue to monitor the platform and delist substandard loan offerings. China’s Supreme People’s Court ruled in 2015 that the courts only enforced collection on loans that charge annual interest rates of up to 24 per cent. It added that rates of up to 36 per cent were legally permissible, but the lender had to figure out its own means of seeking repayment on defaulted debt. That suggests the move by Alipay represents a conservative approach to managing its partnerships amid uncertainty about how regulators will proceed. |