Alipay launches home rental service with benefits for "trustworthy" customers

Ant Financial, the payment affiliate of Alibaba Group, has officially launched a home rental service, and people with good credit on Alipay may be eligible to rent an apartment deposit free, the firm said today.

Currently, more than one million apartments are available on Alipay, covering eight cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Xi'an and Zhengzhou.

People with good credit on Alipay may be exempted from paying a deposit, which is now the norm when it comes to home rentals. 

Wang Bo, head of Ant Financial’s innovation and smart services department, said deposit-free rentals are expected to be the mainstream in the future, with the help of new technologies that track people’s trustworthiness automatically based on consumption manners.

China has been promoting the rental of homes to address the problems that come with high property prices. Last year, China's home rental market was worth 1.3 trillion yuan (US$200 billion), only a fraction of the new home sales market at 11.7 trillion yuan and existing home sales market at 6.5 trillion yuan.