Payments... and Now a Credit Scoring Tool for Line

Line started out as an instant messaging platform, and make further progress into becoming a FinTech. They launched a payment service in the end of 2018 and just unveiled a credit scoring tool based on the data they are able to collect via their messaging service.

Line Score is available for Line customers through Line Credit Corporation, Line Financial Corporation’s credit-focused subsidiary (financial arm of Line Corporation).
Partners:
- Mizuho Bank: first financial partner when they launched their wallet.
- Orico: AI specialist in charge of technical aspects and processing Line’s huge user data entries.
Besides scoring, Line Score will provide the users with access to special offers, discounts and other customised benefits.
Line specifies that credit score assessments are subjected to user consent, and so is the process of sharing data with partner companies.

LINE : 80 million active users each month

Valuing data. Line explains that this tool will not only rely on their users’ financial data but also leverage data about their online connectivity and on a form that will need to be filled out.
Customising scoring processes. Line and Orico are praising an alternative scoring models, more convenient and adapted to the user’s actual behaviours.
Adding value to scoring procedures. In addition to their scores, the users have access to different customised offers enabling them to benefit from this data analysis process.

Line is already planning other services for their scoring tool. They would intend to provide scoring data to third parties through APIs for agreed upon uses: a way to further monetise their customer data.
They also follow in other industry players’ footsteps. In China, for instance, the search engine Baidu, e-commerce giant Alibaba (Sesame Credit) and Tencent (WeChat Pay Points) have implemented scoring systems, too.
Line’s strategy aims at diversifying financial services based on processing user data. Their model can be compared to WeChat’s strategy, since their messaging offer also comes with a set of financial services.

Category : Alertes quotidiennes