At a Samsung smartphone shop in a mall in Shanghai, 31-year-old Lin Wenjie is considering which phone to buy when a saleswoman approaches him with a suggestion.
The saleswoman, who works for consumer lending company Home Credit, tells him she knows how he could pay less up front but get a phone with more storage space. In the end, Mr Lin put down Rmb1,688 ($250) and Home Credit covered the remaining Rmb5,300. “I just had to pay a little up front and I could get the 128 gigabite one,” he says.
Since regulators opened up the consumer finance market three years ago, lenders have deployed hundreds of thousands of salespeople to cash registers and even car parks across China to hand out on-the-spot loans for phones, electronic gadgets and cars.