Just spend

ON NOVEMBER 11th, Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant, posted nearly $18bn in sales for the day. This broke last year’s record for Singles’ Day, an anti-Valentine’s Day that has become a love affair with spending. The popularity of the company’s virtual credit-card, Huabei (roughly translating as “Just spend”), may have helped. Consumers who spend less than 1,000 yuan ($146) online a month spend 50% more once they get one, according to Ant Financial Services, an Alibaba affiliate.
--
 Last year, the government awarded eight companies consumer credit-rating licences. Their pilot programmes are an attempt to flesh out thin financial records and get people thinking about their credit scores. This is new for most Chinese, who do not use credit cards and have never had credit scores.
--
The most popular rating firms are Sesame Credit, run by Alibaba, and China Rapid Finance, which is in partnership with Tencent, a social-media and online-gaming firm. 
--
Sesame Credit relies on users’ online-shopping habits to calculate their credit scores. Li Yingyun, a director, told Caixin, a magazine, that someone playing video games for ten hours a day might be rated a bad risk; a frequent buyer of nappies would be thought more responsible. Meanwhile, China Rapid Finance scours its users’ social networks. Thanks to its link with Tencent, which owns WeChat, one of the country’s leading messaging platform, it is able to examine data about their contacts and payments to judge creditworthiness.
--
As more people sign up to be rated, the industry may help fuel consumption. Credit-card penetration is expected to grow from 16% in 2014 to 44% in 2025, according to the Demand Institute, a think-tank. 
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21710292-chinas-consumer-credit-rating-culture-evolving-fastand-unconventionally-just