Zhima Credit  Zhima Credit (), also known as Sesame Credit, is a private credit scoring and loyalty program system developed by Ant Financial Services Group (AFSG), an affiliate of the Chinese Alibaba Group. It uses data from Alibaba's services to compile its score. Customers receive a score based on a variety of factors based on social media interactions and purchases carried out on Alibaba Group websites or paid for using its affiliate Ant Financial's Alipay mobile wallet. The rewards of having a high score include easier access to loans from Ant Financial and having a more trustworthy profile on e-commerce sites within the Alibaba Group. Zhima Credit was introduced on 28 January 2015. It claimed to be the first credit agency in China to use a score system for individual users, using both online and offline information. Baihe.com, a Chinese matchmaking company, uses Zhima Credit data as part of its service. Zhima Credit's scoring system is roughly modeled after FICO scoring in the United States and Schufa in Germany. In 2015, Zhima Credit published information on the methodology behind its currently running beta version. Zhima Credit's scoring system is roughly modeled after FICO scoring in the United States and Schufa in Germany. The corporate network of Zhima Credit, led by the Alibaba Group, spans over insurance, loan, historical payment, dating, shopping and mobility data. It collects data from all sources by utilizing the regulatory freedom it built from objects and social networks, public and private institutions and offline and online. The system is powered by "data from more than 300 million real-name registered users and 37 million small businesses that buy and sell on Alibaba Group marketplaces". Due to Zhima Credit’s close collaboration with the government, it also has access to all public documents, such as official identity and financial records. Further, this also includes all information that the Chinese government is collecting under its data protection regulation, which requires businesses to turn over their data . For example, the government already has access to the messages of WeChat’s 850 million active users, China’s most popular communication application. Thus, China can already access monitor most social and object data of its citizens on a continuous basis. Zhima Credit emphasizes its strict privacy and data protection, ensured through encryption and segregation. The firm also states that data is only gathered upon knowledge and consent of the user. According to Ant Financial, users’ scores can currently only be shared with their authorization or by themselves. Big data and behavioral analytics are building blocks for the system.