Female millennials are China are using nudes to secure loans.
ABC reports that China’s millennials are using nudes to secure loans for monthly instalment programs.
Lexin’s online platform Fenqile allows customers to buy cars, phones, jewellery and even snacks on credit with paybacks in instalments. Fenqile means “instalment happiness” in Chinese.
A 475-gram box of Oreo biscuits costs 50 yuan but can be paid back in monthly instalments of 2.07 yuan over three years.
Fenquile users are then charged with annual interest rates of over 20%. China’s maximum legal annual interest rate is 36%. Companies that offer microloans charge up to 30%.
Dorrit Chen, Euromonitor International’s Consumer Finance analyst in China said millennials spending habits are different to their parents’ generation. Whilst their parents would choose to save, millennials prefer the buy-now-pay-later system.
“This trend is not only happening in metropolitans, but also [being taken up by] young generations from small towns,” she said.
“Ant Check Later — the [loan service] affiliate of Alibaba — as one of the most popular online credit service providers is a case in point,” Chen added. “[It] offers credit from 500 yuan ($100) to 50,000 yuan ($10,000) based on big data analysis from their Alipay account history.”
China now has 170 million people born after 1990 and 45 million have an Ant Check Later microloan account.
“Buy now pay later makes shopping easier and [more] convenient, which largely boosts millennials’ shopping demand as well as the large amount of delinquencies and subprime loans,” she said.
In 2016, 10GB of pictures of nude young Chinese college students were leaked online. The pictures of 161 female students showed their naked selfies whilst holding their photo IDs. It was alleged that illegal microloan providers had asked for the pictures to secure the loans.
Most victims were young female college students aged between 19 and 23 years old. Many came from China’s under-developed regions.
Lenders used WeChat or QQ to target their victims. College students tended to borrow between $1,000 to $2,000 with interest rates up to 30%. The victims were threatened to leak the naked photos to their friends and family if they did not prepay the loan. Some were roped into the sex industry to repay their debt.
A resident of Nanjing city, Bing Chen, received a nude photo of his daughter Xue Chen sent by an illegal lender.
Xue sent several nude photos of herself to receive a 4,000 yuan loan, which turned into 100,000 yuan in six months. She was asked to send more nude photos and videos of herself to extend the repayment date.
