WeChat issues official electronic Chinese identification cards
Business & Technology
China’s most popular, all-purpose app, WeChat, is poised to extend its reach even further into citizens’ lives. The South China Morning Post covers the news from Xinhua (in Chinese) on a pilot program that launched in Guangzhou on Monday to allow registered users in the city’s Nansha District to use a virtual ID issued by the app in place of the traditional government-issue hard-copy card.
- After a pilot phase in Guangzhou, WeChat plans to roll out electronic IDs in the rest of Guangdong Province, and, ultimately, across the country.
- Given WeChat’s estimated 980 million active users, the SCMP notes that “the program’s success would mark one of the most significant milestones for WeChat after it was initially rolled out by Tencent as a mobile messaging service in 2011.”
Meanwhile, regulators are increasingly concerned about how other entities are collecting and using consumer data.
- In the absence of credit rating systems, China’s online cash lenders use a variety of personal information — such as contact lists and how fast a person types on their phone — to gauge creditworthiness. The New York Times reports (paywall) on the new problems this is causing.
- The online lending companies harass friends, relatives, and employers of deadbeat borrowers.
- “You start to gamble. Soon you get addicted to it,” says a university dropout profiled in the article.
—Sky Canaves
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