Chinese P2P Web Lending Breaks New Record In April

TECHINASIA: Online finance and lending platforms have been exploding in China, and the P2P lending sector is especially hot. In April we saw Xiaomi-backed Chinese P2P lending site Jimubox and Sequoia-backed P2P lending site PPDai raise massive series C rounds, and now that the month is over we’ve got data on the market as a whole. And that data, which comes from Yingcan Zixun, says that P2P web lending had its best month ever.

Specifically, lending numbers were up in 19 of China’s provinces, and the month set a new record for total deal volume: RMB 55.1 billion (US$8.8 billion). That’s a 11.9 percent growth compared to the market in March, and nearly 300 percent growth compared to April of 2014.

The biggest players in terms of number of transactions were Hongling Chuangtou, PPMoney, and Lujinsuo. But despite being at the top, all of them actually saw transaction numbers drop in April as compared to March. Meanwhile, a number of up-and-coming players including the aforementioned Jimubox, saw spikes of more than 10 percent transaction growth in April as compared to the previous month.

In general, the P2P lending industry’s breakneck pace of growth does seem to be slowing, but since most companies are still seeing growth and with VC funding flooding into the sector, May is looking likely to be another record-breaking month.

Read more on the topic: P2P lending scams jumped 11-fold in China last year, on track for even more in 2015 by TECHINASIA