Ten key words talked about most in World Internet Conference in Wuzhen

The stand of an online finance company at an expo in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. Transactions involving P2P platforms doubled to 250 billion yuan in 2014. [Photo/Xinhua]

P2P

The P2P (peer-to-peer) online lending platforms is already an important part of Internet finance in China and the industry was also one of the topics mostly discussed at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen.

Internet-based instant lending and borrowing between strangers is called P2P lending. And the websites enabling such transactions are called P2P platforms.

Industry leaders and thinkers said the business saw extraordinary development in China because of the sad fact that for too long, the nation's small businesses have been under-serviced financially, if not ignored, by a few State-owned, inefficient banking giants. The emergence of the P2P platforms simply filled the gap.

P2P lending platforms differ from others, in that they lend money to unrelated individuals, or peers, without using a traditional financial intermediary such as a bank. As a result there are still few laws and regulations applicable to the industry.

A shortcoming is that creditors usually don't have control over the platform operators, and therefore their rights are not duly protected.

Industry leaders and thinkers believe how to build a stable and reliable risk control system to screen out qualified enterprises with repayment ability and willingness is the greatest challenge for the P2P market in China.