China plans to break up Ant’s Alipay, force creation of separate loans app

(Reuters) -Beijing wants to break up Alipay, the hugely popular payments app owned by Jack Ma’s Ant Group, and create a separate app for the company’s highly profitable loans business, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

The plan will also see Ant turn over the user data that underpins its lending decisions to a new credit scoring joint-venture, which will be partly state-owned, the newspaper https://on.ft.com/3ElGHtw reported, citing two people familiar with the process.

State-backed firms are set to take a sizeable stake in Ant’s credit-scoring joint venture for the first time, three people told Reuters last week.