Mar 17, 2017

Ph.D. student Shazeda Ahmed discusses China's social credit system with CNBC

From CNBC News

FICO with Chinese characteristics: Nice rewards, but punishing penalties

By Cheang Ming

Blair Zhou, 26, uses Alipay on a daily basis, spending at least 2,500 yuan a month with the third-party payments platform on everything from transportation to dinner....

What makes using Alipay even more convenient is Zhou's relatively high Sesame Credit score — 775 out of a possible 950 — that allows her to access a host of privileges unavailable to those with lower scores....

Sesame Credit, a credit-scoring service from Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial, attributes scores to Alipay users who have opted into the program. Users with higher scores are able to access benefits that run the gamut from waivers on car rental deposits to expedited airport security checks....

Businesses are just as involved in driving the system forward, even though it's often framed as a government-led initiative, Shazeda Ahmed, a doctoral candidate at Berkeley, told CNBC.

In her research, Ahmed, who specializes in Chinese internet policy, focused on Alipay's use of Sesame Credit. Both Alipay and Sesame Credit are run by Ant Financial, which is one of eight companies approved by authorities for social credit experimentation in the private sector.

Sesame Credit gives users a score based on five dimensions of information: personal information, payment ability, credit history, social networks and behaviors. Some are more objective than others....

The rewards mechanism in the social credit system could also generate higher levels of consumption, Ahmed said. While researching online reactions to Sesame Credit, she said she found plenty of buzz suggesting that users can increase their scores by spending more via Alipay. Online news platform Quartz reported in 2015 that Sesame Credit did not take into account what users purchased, but the amount of purchases affected scores.

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Last updated:

March 17, 2017