MORE than a million apartments will soon be officially available for rent on Alipay. Eight cities, including Shenzhen, will take the lead in promoting renting flats with Sesame Credit scores.

Users who have a score of more than 650 points in Sesame Credit, Alipay’s credit scoring system, will be readily exempted from paying a deposit.

According to Alipay, in order to avoid unscrupulous real estate agencies and fake housing information, the housing options that users see on the platform have all undergone credit evaluation.

To finalize the deal the two parties will sign an electronic contract. Some of the benefits of the platform include avoiding false contracts, and since the vacancy will be removed from the platform automatically once the electronic contract is signed, subsequent users will not be misled.

Tenants can reportedly give bad reviews of landlords who maliciously order tenants to leave or raise the rent arbitrarily, which will be included in the latter’s Sesame Credit record.

“This pattern underwent a half-year trial in Shanghai. Although only 15 percent of the housing could accept a credit score instead of a deposit, they accounted for 80 percent of the transaction volume, which proved that this pattern is very popular with customers,” said Wang Bo, general manager of the innovation and intelligent services department of Ant Financial Services Group.

(Zhang Yu)