From the archives | The P2P lending fiasco that made regulators fear Ant

Our regularly scheduled column is having a week off. In its place, may we recommend a look at the TechNode archives? Our suggested topic: P2P lending.

The peer-to-peer lending fad is something a lot of China tech has tried to forget, but, as TechBuzz China's Rui Ma wrote recently, you can’t understand what’s happening with Ant Group and fintech regulation without it.

The online P2P industry went from the launch of pioneer platform PPDAI in 2007 to the near-total ban of the industry in 2019, leaving behind a trail of angry and duped investors. The decision to put Ant under strict new regulations—forcing it to drop its IPO and drastically changing its business model—likely reflects fears of the consequences of letting finance grow faster than oversight.

Clearly, regulators are once burned, twice shy. But does Ant really have anything in common with the industry a senior police official later called “a disaster zone of fraud”? We’ll be back next week to examine that question with a look at the financial issues in play with new regulations on fintech.

TechNode covered the story from start to finish. Here’s a timeline of the best of our coverage:

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