Chinese ride-sharing giant DiDi Chuxing has announced the shelving of its lending product DiDi Yuefu, following a crackdown on the online finance sector by authorities.
DiDi announced that on 31 March it had taken its DiDi Yuefu (月付) consumer finance product offline, as part of efforts “optimise our service quality.
DiDi called for customers to make repayments by 8 April, as well as to apply for credit card services with cooperating banks should they require further consumer finance services.
DiDi Yuefu was first launched in December 2020, with observers pointing out its similarity to Ant Group’s Huabei (花呗) brand, as a service that permitted consumers to buy now and pay later.
The shelving of DiDi Yuefu comes following a crackdown by China’s financial regulators on the Internet finance sector.
In April 2021 financial regulators summoned 13 of China’s online giants, including Tencent, Du Xiaoman, JD Finance, ByteDance, Lufax and DiDi, for disciplinary “regulatory discussions.”
During the discussions regulators stressed the need for all financial operations in China to be licensed, as well as the need for greater compliance and prudence in conducting online finance operations.
Heightened regulatory pressure prompted fintech giant Ant Group to spin off its Huabei brand into a separate consumer finance platform.
DiDi has yet to unveil plans to transfer DiDi Yuefu’s services to its consumer finance affiliate Hangyin Consumer Finance (杭银消费金融), in which DiDi holds 33.34% stake via wholly-owned subsidiary Dirun (Tianjin) Keji Co., Ltd (迪润（天津）科技有限公司).
