Lucy Peng Teaching China's Shoppers How to Spend

摘要

China's emerging middle class has billions to spend. But few have access to banks or much trust in online retail, which traps their purchasing power under a mattress. Ant Financial-a spinoff of the retail colossus Alibaba-is changing that cautiousness. Run by Alibaba cofounder Lucy Peng, the divisionbegan as an outgrowth of Alipay, the company's version of PayPal. Since then, it has expanded to include a money-market fund, a peer-to-peer lending service, and a micro-loan program. The company is also developing Sesame Credit, which will assign credit scores based on Alibaba customer data, making it easier for hundreds of millions of Chinese to get loans. Alibaba clearly hopes that all these services will make Chinese consumers more comfortable spending money on its platform. But Erik Gordon, a business school professor at the University of Michigan, says the company is also introducing them to modern commerce in general. "Chinese consumers aren't used to trusting somebody they don't know," he says. But Ant Financial gets them used to that idea. That's huge for China's social fabric-and, perhaps, for any American company salivating over the prospect of tapping into the Chinese market.