Internet lending transactions surge during first six months

Internet lending transactions surged to a record during the first six months of the year in China, with the bulk of the deals made through mobile devices, according to industry reports.

Transaction volumes of Internet lending from January to June totaled 300.6 billion yuan ($47 billion), while that for the whole of 2014 was 252.8 billion yuan, according to data from Wangdaizhijia, a portal that provides Internet lending information.

Wangdaizhijia said there were 2,028 Internet lending platforms in China by the end of June, up 28.8 percent compared with the levels by the end of last year.

"The Internet finance sector has rapid growth potential and plays a key role in the nations' economic restructuring. It can also spearhead the use of new technology and transform the traditional lending sector," said Liu Erhai, founding partner of Joy Capital, a Beijing-based venture capital firm.

Internet finance applications have been extremely popular recently, and some have more than 10 million active users, according to bigdata-research.cn, an online platform on big data research in software and Internet sectors.

Peer-to-peer lending app Tongbanjie is one of the leaders in the sector with about 3 million monthly active users. "We pay close attention to risk controls and improving user experiences," said He Jun, CEO of Tongbanjie.

China had about 740 million mobile Internet users by the end of the first quarter, up 10.3 percent year-on-year, information technology consultancy Analysys International said in a recent report.

Internet giants such as Baidu Inc, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd are also expanding their presence in the mobile Internet finance sector. Alibaba has launched Yu'ebao, the biggest monetary fund in China, and Yulebao, the world's first platform for individuals to invest in movies.

Some 55 peer-to-peer lending platforms had received venture capital investments by the end of June, and most of them were made in 2014 and this year, said Beijing-based P2P company etongdai.com.

"The P2P sector is still at the early stage, and the most important thing for a company is to do their own work first, followed by venture capital investments," said Kang Wen, CEO of etongdai.com.