China's First Online-Only Bank Launched by Popular Messaging App Developer

Tencent, one of China's top internet groups, launched the country’s first online-only private bank in a ceremony in Shenzhen today. The new service is called WeBank and branded similarly to Tencent’s popular messaging app WeChat.

WeChat is the the largest messaging app in the world by the number of active users. According to Tencent's latest figures, as of August 2014 the app had 438 million active users, with 70 million of them outside of China. The WeChat app also offers a payment service between users, available since 2014.

Small and private companies are considered to be disadvantaged in obtaining loans from state-owned banks in China, which prefer lending to larger, state-owned groups.

As part of a pilot program to make credit more available to small businesses, Tencent and rival Alibaba were among the few private investors approved by the Chinese government last year to launch new private lending banks. The tech giants plan to Leverage Leverage In financial trading, leverage is a loan supplied by a broker, which facilitates a trader in being able to control a relatively large amount of money with a significantly lesser initial investment. Leverage therefore allows traders to make a much greater return on investment compared to trading without any leverage. Traders seek to make a profit from movements in financial markets, such as stocks and currencies.Trading without any leverage would greatly diminish the potential rewards, so traders In financial trading, leverage is a loan supplied by a broker, which facilitates a trader in being able to control a relatively large amount of money with a significantly lesser initial investment. Leverage therefore allows traders to make a much greater return on investment compared to trading without any leverage. Traders seek to make a profit from movements in financial markets, such as stocks and currencies.Trading without any leverage would greatly diminish the potential rewards, so traders Read this Term their Big Data Big Data Big data refers to the collection of data that is too complex and too large for processing by standard database tools. There is no specific quantity of data, which is set as a minimum level to be considered Big data. Image the data collected on global credit card transactions. Many governments used Big data analysis to study the recent pandemic spread. The term Big data was first introduced in 1980 by Charles Tilly.The term Big data was primarily used in computer science, statistics, and econome Big data refers to the collection of data that is too complex and too large for processing by standard database tools. There is no specific quantity of data, which is set as a minimum level to be considered Big data. Image the data collected on global credit card transactions. Many governments used Big data analysis to study the recent pandemic spread. The term Big data was first introduced in 1980 by Charles Tilly.The term Big data was primarily used in computer science, statistics, and econome Read this Term advantage, having hundreds of millions of users, to assess the credit risk of small borrowers.

“We will lower costs for and deliver practical benefits to small clients, while forcing traditional financial institutions to accelerate reforms,” Premier Li said at the opening ceremony, according to Xinhua, the official news agency. “It’s one small step for WeBank, one giant step for financial reform.” With the press of a button he then launched the new service and sent the first loan, RMB35,000 to a truck driver.