Ant Financial, the payment affiliate of Alibaba Group, has officially launched a home rental service, and people with good credit on Alipay may be eligible to rent an apartment deposit free, the firm said yesterday.
More than one million apartments are now available on Alipay in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Xi'an and Zhengzhou.
People with good credit on Alipay may be exempted from paying a deposit, which is the norm for home rentals.
Wang Bo, head of Ant Financial's innovation and smart services department, said deposit-free rentals are expected to be the mainstream in the future, with the help of new technologies that track people's trustworthiness automatically based on consumption behavior.
China has been promoting the rental of homes to address the problems of high property prices.
Last year, China's home rental market was worth 1.3 trillion yuan ($200 billion).
