This marks a big step forward for Tencent: not only does this fill in a glaring gap in their product lineup, it also puts them in direct competition with Alibaba’s Sesame Credit.
According to previous screenshots from early testers, the credit scores—ranging from a maximum of 850 points and a minimum of 300 points—were calculated from five indexes: social connections, security, wealth, the ability to honor an agreement, and consumption behavior.
Social data constitutes a major part of Tencent Credit’s rating system. The data collected from WeChat and QQ—which claim 900 million and 860 million monthly active users respectively. The consumption data was mainly gathered through Mobile QQ and WeChat payment.
Tencent is also partnering with financial institutions like WeBank, China Construction Bank and local service institutions for complementing the credit rating mechanism.
Both Alibaba and Tencent have set early sights on the credit scoring sector, an essential component for financial services to solve the rising online security issues by leveraging big data. In 2014, when Alibaba’s Ant Financial was tinkering on Sesame Credit, Tencent also laid out in the sector with plans to launch a similar product. Both the companies obtained government approval to run their consumer credit rating services two years ago.
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