Comment on Local Listing Service 58.com to Offer Loans to Small Businesses, another Step Closer to Becoming a Taobao for Local Services by Dianrong, P2P Funding Site Led by Lending Club Cofounder, Pockets Fresh Investment for Market Expansion - TechNode

['Tracey Xiang', 'More Tracey Xiang', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] Comments for TechNode 2014-07-10 00:00:00

Chinese local listing site 58.com (NYSE: WUBA) announced on July 7 to build a peer-to-peer lending platform to finance local merchants who post listings on its site. As China’s leading local listing service, 58.com introduced the Alipay escrow payment solution to enable direct transactions within the site. Alipay would become Alibaba’s financial arm, aka Alifinance, and began offering small loans to online retailers on Alibaba marketplaces, such as Taobao and Tmall. But unlike Alibaba that provides loans by itself, 58.com said they’d build a peer-to-peer lending platform to have individuals finance merchants. It is expected its local listing service will be integrated into Tencent’s social products, especially WeChat, helping the Chinese Internet giant get a stronghold in online-to-offline market — Tencent built its own online-to-offline services that so far are not successful.