WeChat is quietly ranking user behavior to play catch-up with Alibaba

Over one billion people leave behind trails of information on WeChat every day as they use the messenger to chat, read, shop, hail rides, rent umbrellas and run many other errands. And the Tencent app has quietly started using this type of signal to determine whether a user is worthy of perks such as deposit-free […]

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Petal’s no-fee credit card for the credit score-less is now open to the public

Petal, the startup credit card company that’s offering a no-fee credit line to people without a credit history, is now publicly available. Launched earlier this year by co-founders Jason Gross, Andrew Endicott, Andrew Ehrich, and Jake Arenas, Petal has received a $34 million credit facility from Jeffries and Silicon Valley Bank to bring its consumer […]

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Alibaba’s Ant Financial denies stealing from Equifax

Ant Financial has denied claims that it covertly raided Equifax — the U.S. credit firm that was hit by a hack last year — to grab information, including code, confidential data and documents to help recruit staff for its own credit scoring service. The Alibaba affiliate, which is valued at over $100 billion, launched Sesame […]

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Credit Karma acquires mortgage platform Approved

Credit Karma, the service best known for providing free credit score monitoring and other financial advice (mostly to millennials), is getting into the mortgage business. The company today announced that it has acquired Approved, a mortgage platform that brings modern technology to a process that even today often still involves faxing documents back and forth. The […]

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Kredivo raises $30M to build a digital credit card for Southeast Asia

FinAccel, a Southeast Asia-based startup that offers a digital credit card service in Indonesia, has closed a $30 million Series B round as it begins to consider overseas expansion. The company launched its ‘Kredivo’ service two years ago to help consumers pay online in Southeast Asia, where credit card penetration is typically low, and it is essentially […]

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