Ride-hailing coupon offers redirect to loan application pages; food delivery apps prominently feature "installment payment" options; photo-editing tools pop up with "exclusive credit limits"; accessing VIP music or video content requires completing a credit assessment first. Nowadays, lending services have expanded from financial apps into various daily-life applications, becoming an ever-present "shadow" on mobile screens.
The pervasive nature of app-based lending has drawn regulatory attention. This year, six travel platform companies including Ctrip, Amap, and Tongcheng Travel, along with five prominent online lending platforms such as Fenqile, Qifu Jietiao, Niwodai, Yixianghua, and CreditFly, were summoned by the National Financial Regulatory Administration due to issues concerning financial marketing and fee transparency. Recently, the National Financial Regulatory Administration and the People's Bank of China jointly issued the "Regulations on Disclosure of Comprehensive Financing Costs for Personal Loan Business," requiring financial institutions to explicitly disclose all components of comprehensive financing costs to borrowers.
The widespread penetration of app-based lending reflects platforms' meticulously calculated "financial equations." How to extract greater commercial value from existing users stems from platforms' business strategies. Financial credit services, characterized by high standardization and substantial profit margins, have become a prime channel for monetizing traffic. Beyond operating their own credit businesses, platforms can also refer users to partner financial institutions, earning either technical service fees or per-successful-loan commissions—each click carries a designated price. Some say, "The ultimate destination of the internet is finance," making the embedding of loan access points across various consumption scenarios an inevitable outcome driven by commercial logic.
To encourage borrowing, some platforms deliberately create cognitive gaps by equating "installment payments" with "discounts," using "daily interest" to obscure "annualized rates," and leveraging information asymmetry to package loan services as "consumer benefits." This blurs the line between consumption and debt, leading consumers to inadvertently accumulate liabilities while pursuing minor perks.
The precision of algorithmic technology has transformed loan marketing from "casting a wide net" to "targeted strikes." By analyzing user behavior data—such as browsing history and payment habits—internet platforms can accurately gauge financial needs and borrowing inclinations: post-credit-card-bill "payment stress periods," late-night e-commerce browsing spikes, frequent use of installment payment services—all become criteria for algorithmic loan promotions. Some platforms excessively collect user data through default consents and broad authorizations, providing detailed support for targeted marketing and further intensifying the penetration of loan information. Algorithmically pushed loan offers become "customized temptations" that resonate with users' psychological states, creating a sense that "algorithms know when I want to borrow better than I do," leading to unintended debt traps.
The omnipresence of app-based lending not only risks keeping borrowers in a financially strained "sub-health" state but may also trigger broader social issues: some individuals fall into vicious cycles of "using loans to repay loans" due to over-borrowing, with severe cases resulting in massive debt; frequent scams arising from personal information leaks highlight systemic vulnerabilities. Addressing these issues fundamentally requires more than voluntary service standardization by platforms and rational consumption by users—consistent regulatory enforcement is crucial.
While monetizing traffic through financial services is not inherently problematic, the pervasive infiltration of app-based lending is never merely a matter of "non-compliant platform marketing." It intertwines multiple factors: platforms' precise calculations of consumer psychology, severe information asymmetry in lending, and rule-breaking driven by commercial interests. Only by further refining regulatory frameworks, strengthening oversight measures, strictly standardizing app-based lending operations, and rigorously penalizing violations can orderly and measured development of loan services be achieved. This will allow finance to return to its service-oriented essence and better protect consumer rights. When all parties embrace rationality and responsibility, the persistent "shadows" of lending on mobile screens may finally fade.
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