A closer look
Traditional banks are so last century. While state-owned Chinese banks are busy burying themselves in red tape, tech giants like Ant Group's Alipay effectively run a parallel financial universe. This shadow banking system issues microloans to millions of underbanked consumers and small businesses in milliseconds, completely bypassing conventional regulatory frameworks. It turns out that holding the purchase history of a billion people is far better collateral than a dusty credit score, allowing them to underwrite risk with terrifying, algorithmic precision.
