Beijing Demands More Consumer Data From Jack Ma’s Ant Group

Although Jack Ma agreed to turn over Ant Group’s customer financial data, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) and Beijing regulators are not satisfied with the quality of what’s been submitted, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Tuesday (Mar. 2), citing sources.

Ma previously said he would extend customer loan data to a state-backed database on the 500 million borrowers. He agreed to turn over personal identities, monies borrowed and repayment statuses. Ant has so far submitted insufficient amounts of data, something the PBoC is looking to rectify, sources said, per FT.

Ant Group — formerly known as Ant Financial and Alipay — is an affiliate company of the Alibaba Group. The companies were founded by Ma, who owns the largest percentage of the private Chinese firms. Alipay has one billion users and 80 million merchants and is China’s largest payments platform. Ant holds the largest trove of consumer financial data.

Ma has said that Ant has shared so little data due to the country’s privacy laws. Users have to give permission for their data to be submitted, and most choose to opt-out. Regardless, the central bank is putting pressure on companies to figure out a way to get customers to share more data. One suggested approach would be having customers agree to the submission of data as a condition to using the service. Ant has so far avoided this route due to fears of losing users, per FT.

Ant Group’s plans for an initial public offering (IPO) last year were derailed by Chinese regulators. Since then, Ma agreed to restructure the company and abide by regulations. PBOC Governor Gang Yi has hinted that the IPO — tracking to be the world’s biggest — could possibly be rescheduled. One reason for the cancellation of Ant’s IPO was the complex structure of the company’s ownership. Weeks before the IPO was scheduled, investigations were underway about the nature of the company’s ownership.

Ant Group is in discussions with backers of its new consumer finance division to shore up the company’s funding.