As several listed companies have disclosed their first-quarter reports for 2026, China's loan facilitation industry has presented a performance report under significant pressure.
The quarterly data shows that from January to March this year, the four leading loan facilitation platforms all experienced varying degrees of performance decline. Qifu Technology (ASX: QFIN), FinVolution Group, and X Financial saw their revenues drop by 16.66%, 7.78%, and 39.3% respectively, with only Lexin posting a slight revenue increase of 6.6%. The net profit performance was even more dismal, with declines across the four platforms ranging from 43% to 92%. Although Lexin's revenue grew slightly, its net profit also fell by more than half year-on-year. Concurrently, delinquency rates for loans overdue by more than 90 days have generally risen, with Qifu Technology's rate increasing to 3.5%, FinVolution Group's to 3.11%, Lexin's to 3.5%, and X Financial's reaching 9.95%.
However, within this challenging performance landscape, there is a notable bright spot.
FinVolution Group's 2026 first-quarter report for the first time disclosed its overseas business as a separate reporting segment. This independently presented report shows that the group's overseas business generated a net revenue of 949 million yuan in the first quarter, a year-on-year increase of 34.5%, accounting for 29.6% of the group's total revenue. Overseas operating profit was 45.8 million yuan, an increase of 88% year-on-year. The overseas market has grown into FinVolution Group's second-largest profit engine.
On one side, domestic performance is generally under pressure; on the other, overseas business maintains relatively fast growth. This contrast accurately depicts the current state of the loan facilitation industry.
On October 1, 2025, a regulatory measure known as the "New Rule No. 9" officially took effect. This policy shift almost overnight rewrote the profit logic that the domestic loan facilitation industry had relied on for survival. Under the dual pressures of a maturing domestic consumer finance market and continuously tightening regulation, loan facilitation platforms are transforming overseas expansion from an "optional question" into a "mandatory question." But is this cross-border migration a blue ocean or another red sea?
Early Movers Gaining Ground
In the race to go overseas, platforms that moved early and achieved mature localization are already taking the lead in foreign markets. The contraction in domestic business is being partially offset by overseas growth.
FinVolution Group has set a medium-to-long-term target for international business to contribute 50% of its revenue by 2030, positioning it as one of the most internationalized listed loan facilitation platforms. By the end of 2025, its international registered users reached 52.1 million, a year-on-year increase of 45.9%.
For the full year 2025, FinVolution Group's international business transaction volume reached 14 billion yuan, up 38.6% year-on-year; international revenue reached 3.3 billion yuan, up 32.0% year-on-year, accounting for 24.6% of the group's total net revenue. The company not only achieved full-year profitability in Indonesia and the Philippines but also strategically entered the Australian market.
Jiayin Technology's overseas expansion has also accelerated. Its financial reports show that in 2025, its Indonesian business scale grew by approximately 187% year-on-year, with registered users increasing by about 119%. Its Mexican business saw total loan disbursement volume grow by about 105% year-on-year, with registered users increasing by approximately 110%. The company stated that both markets have passed the "0 to 1" validation stage.
Alongside business expansion, talent recruitment has kept pace. In 2025, Jiayin Technology launched recruitment for its 2025 and 2026 overseas management trainee programs, requiring candidates willing to work long-term in Indonesia or Mexico, proficient in Indonesian or Spanish, with a starting annual package including expatriate subsidies of 300,000 yuan.
Qifu Technology is also accelerating its catch-up efforts. In March this year, Qifu Technology's CEO and Director, Wu Haisheng, publicly stated that the company would leverage its AI (Artificial Intelligence) technological advantages in 2026 to accelerate its overseas market layout, targeting Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and other regions.
Qifu Technology is also actively building its talent pipeline. Recruitment information from early this year shows the company established a dedicated "Mexico Special Program" position in its 2026 campus recruitment.
Pioneers appear more composed, while latecomers feel the pressure. Looking at a longer timeline, pioneers in this overseas expansion battle have been laying the groundwork for nearly a decade, successfully navigating the entire chain of licensing, customer acquisition, risk control, and post-loan management, replicating the experience of the domestic loan facilitation boom.
Target Markets and Strategic Rationale
Why are these giants primarily targeting Latin American countries like Mexico and Brazil?
"Latin America has a dense population, considerable market potential, and, being adjacent to the United States, possesses a unique geopolitical advantage, forming a natural strategic fit," a fintech practitioner noted.
Another crucial factor is the lack of local financial services. Traditional bank penetration is low, supply of inclusive microcredit is insufficient, a large portion of the population lacks basic access to finance, and cash remains mainstream for daily transactions. Public data shows that among Mexico's 130 million people, nearly 40% of adults and about 80% of micro and small enterprises are outside the coverage of the formal financial system.
The practitioner further contrasted this with Southeast Asia, which also attracts many Chinese companies but where profitability is generally difficult, mainly limited by average loan sizes of only a few hundred to a few thousand Renminbi, making it hard to balance costs and revenue. In contrast, the Latin American market offers higher customer transaction values, greater interest rate spreads, and a lower starting point for financial penetration. This means even relatively standardized products can achieve a better unit economic model. Coupled with accelerating local digitalization and a gradually clarifying regulatory environment, these combined factors make Latin America a highly cost-effective destination for overseas expansion at present.
A senior executive from a loan facilitation platform revealed that the reason Chinese fintech companies are flocking to Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa is rooted in the "larger market gaps and broader space" in these regions.
Emerging economies represented by Indonesia, Mexico, and the Philippines have regulators that are relatively friendly to licensed fintech institutions on one hand, and旺盛 demand on the other, with entry and operational barriers far lower than those in mature markets like Europe and the US. "Conversely, places like the United States, Japan, and Germany are not necessarily suitable for overseas expansion," the executive stated. "Their licensing requirements are extremely high, for example, requiring the acquisition of a bank, which involves massive investment."
Information from within the industry indicates that the overseas businesses of several institutions are still in the cultivation and development stage, with overall scale remaining relatively small. For platforms with faster expansion progress, overseas business can account for 20% to 30% of total business, while for slower progress platforms, it's within 20%. However, although not yet sufficient to replace the domestic market, growth rates are high, and some businesses have already achieved阶段性 profitability.
Drivers for the Overseas Push
The overseas expansion of domestic loan facilitation platforms is both an active global layout based on their own technological advantages and a passive breakout under pressure from the domestic market.
Most直观ly, the "golden era" of the domestic loan facilitation market is gradually coming to an end. On October 1, 2025, "New Rule No. 9" officially took effect. This regulatory document explicitly requires commercial banks to strictly control the comprehensive financing cost of internet loans (the industry generally implements an annualized interest rate cap of 24%), while also requiring banks to implement a whitelist management system for loan facilitation partner platforms.
The 24% comprehensive annualized rate红线彻底切断了 online lending platforms' profit model of using guarantee fees, service fees, and other forms to maintain实际费率 at 30% or even higher. The whitelist management system has also significantly raised the cooperation门槛 for loan facilitation platforms, making the profit model the industry relied on for survival in past years unsustainable.
Financial report data serves as the best footnote to this regulatory storm. As an industry bellwether, Qifu Technology's revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 was 4.09 billion yuan, down 8.7% year-on-year, while net profit was 1.02 billion yuan, a sharp decline of 46.8% year-on-year, with its loan balance experiencing a rare negative growth. Analysis suggests that the new rule compressing the comprehensive financing cost上限 from 36% to 24% was the direct cause of its net profit halving in Q4 2025.
The asset disposal actions by Focus Media also reflect changes at the industry level. In January 2026, Focus Media清仓 its 54.97% stake in Shuhe Technology, the main operator of "Huanbei," for 791 million yuan. Compared to the book value of 2.944 billion yuan, the impairment幅度 was as high as 73.45%. It is noteworthy that Shuhe Technology recorded a net profit of 785 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2025 but turned to an approximate net loss of 684 million yuan in the fourth quarter, showing a significant反差 in performance. The company最终 achieved an annual net profit of 101 million yuan for the year, down 89.29% year-on-year.
Challenges and Competitive Advantages
Upgraded domestic regulation and narrowing profit margins are forcing platforms to accelerate their search for new growth engines. However, this overseas path, which carries high hopes, is also fraught with荆棘. Bottlenecks such as tightening regulation, localization difficulties, and data scarcity present core challenges for platforms.
For instance, on the regulatory front, Indonesia's Financial Services Authority (OJK) has initiated a phased reduction of interest rates and requires core systems and databases to be deployed locally. A new draft regulation in the Philippines for 2026 raises the paid-in capital requirement for online lending platforms to 20 to 50 million pesos, with compliance门槛 continuously rising.
On the operational front, frequent policy changes lead to反复 adjustments in approval processes; low repayment willingness among local users, inefficient judiciary, and a mature debt evasion industry chain make collection难度 far exceed that in China.
On the risk control front, overseas credit reporting coverage is generally below 30%, with traditional data缺失. Platforms can only rely on alternative data like SMS messages and App installation lists to infer risk, significantly reducing model effectiveness.
However, from the perspective of practitioners, the sheer scale and complex, ever-changing regulatory environment of the Chinese本土 market mean domestic platforms have accumulated far more experience in dealing with various issues than emerging markets. The operational systems, compliance awareness, and risk control experience formed by domestic loan facilitation platforms through years of navigating challenges lay a foundation for rapid replication in overseas markets.
"The problems we encounter in China already超額覆盖 the difficulty level in these emerging countries. To a certain extent, we are relatively adept overseas," the aforementioned loan facilitation platform executive pointed out.
The prospects for the overseas expansion of loan facilitation platforms do not lie in replicating the旧梦 of domestic野蛮生长, but in whether they can truly operationalize the entire链 of localized operations within a compliance framework. Some first-movers have already navigated the path from 0 to 1, while others are catching up and加速落子 their布局. The consensus is that this test has shifted from an "optional question" to a "mandatory question," and the answers are being written, bit by bit, in practice.
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