China’s first digital bank rolls out new loan product on Tencent Video

Shenzhen-based digital bank WeBank has rolled out a new consumption loan product called Xiao’e Huaqian on the Tencent Video app, a video-streaming platform operated by the Chinese giant Tencent, Chinese media outlet Xinliu Finance reported on Wednesday.

Photo credit: Chris Yunker

The new financial product offers a loan credit quota up to 50,000 yuan (US$7,127) for a short tenure of less than one year. According to Xinliu Finance, current users have been granted loans between 2,000 yuan (US$285) and 7,000 yuan (US$997) on average, and half of these loans can only be used for digital transactions and payments via Tencent’s WeChat, added Xinliu.

This is the second consumption loan product offered by WeBank, which was initiated by Tencent and other investors including Baiyeyuan and Liye Group. After gaining its banking license in December 2014, WeBank launched its first consumption loan four years ago, first on Tencent’s QQ app and later on the WeChat app.

Xiao’e Huaqian is now available only to a small group of users of Tencent Video on an invitation model. According to Tencent’s second-quarter earnings release, its platform had 96.9 million subscribers in the second quarter of this year.

Xiao’e Huaqian has three institutional investors, which are Home Credit, Industrial Consumer Finance, and Bank of Beijing Consumer Finance Company.

The move could help Tencent bring more financial services to its video users and expand its fintech presence in China to compete with Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial, whose payment platform Alipay hosts loan products such as Jiebei.

Tencent booked 22.9 billion yuan (US$3.3 billion) in fintech and business service revenues in the second quarter of this year, up 37% year on year, beating other business segments such as digital content and online games in terms of growth rate.

This report was first published on KrAsia.

Currency converted from Chinese yuan to US dollar: US$1 = 7.02 yuan.