Page 139 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 1

STS420 Jianhua (Klyment) H.

Age of personal credit score
Jianhua (Klyment) Huang
WeChat Pay Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract
With a prosperous development of e-wallet in China, people are using their
phones to buy almost anything. It is in this respect that the competition
between e-wallet companies is entering upon a new phase, one that relying
on big data and artificial intelligence to generate more values for customers
based on the large transaction data. With a study of the credit profile system
developed by the central bank, these commercial firms find it hard to apply
for their small and medium merchants due to lack of data source and limitation
of access. Therefore, they decide to set up a personal credit score based on
the transaction big data along with other dimension sources. Moreover, now
the personal credit score behind the e-wallet is a proven success in various
payment scenarios. In this paper, we are exploring the origins of personal
credit score in China and how does the score affect people’s daily life both
online and offline.

Keywords
China; Mobile Payments; Big Data; Data Modelling; Credit Reporting Model

1. Introduction
In China, everyone pays for everything with their phones. Starbucks, 7-
Eleven and even street hawkers. With such tremendous transaction data, e-
wallet companies are considering how to generate more value for customers.
When they are looking for examples in western countries, these commercial
firms find out that a more flexible and dynamic credit score of the individual
could be an entry point.
Nowadays, when Chinese citizens have credit deals such as applying for
credit cards, mortgage for purchasing realestate, banks will check their credit
profile in the credit reference center powered by the People’s Bank of China.
However, the source of credit history is limited in banks channels; for instance,
if a customer has overdue credit card bills, the bank will file a report to the
credit reference center. We can tell there is a shortcoming in terms of this
credit collection. Firstly the period of collecting credit history is a monthly
basis, and there is no down drill of the default reason. Secondly, only banks
and a few non-bank institutions are allowed to check customers’ credit profile,
but many small and medium business still required such information when

128 | I S I W S C 2 0 1 9