Jiedaibao

Jiedaibao (借贷宝, literally "borrowing treasure") is a Chinese electronic-IOU and peer-to-peer lending app launched in Beijing in June 2015 by Renrenxing Technology Co., Ltd. (人人行科技), a company founded in December 2014 and originally backed by the private-equity group Tongchuang Jiuding Investment Holding Co. (同创九鼎投资控股), whose chairman Wu Gang served as Jiedaibao's chairman. The app let acquaintances (and, later, strangers) document loans electronically, and it grew explosively: by August 2015 it had raised what was reported as a record internet-finance Series A, and by January 2016 a Series B pushed its reported valuation past $7 billion, making it one of China's earliest fintech unicorns. By the end of 2016 the platform reported roughly 135-140 million registered users and more than 100 billion yuan in brokered loans. The company's reputation was badly damaged in 2016 when reports surfaced that some lenders on the platform were demanding nude photos from female borrowers, mostly college students, as loan collateral -- a scandal that prompted a company report to Beijing police and years of negative press. Jiedaibao pivoted over time toward being an "electronic contract" (电子签) and IOU-documentation platform, with the operating entity eventually restructured as Chengdu Jiebao Information Services Co., Ltd. (成都借宝信息服务有限公司), headquartered in Chengdu, Sichuan. The platform never shook its association with high-interest, loosely regulated lending: on March 15, 2025, China Central Television's annual "3·15" consumer-rights gala named Jiedaibao and its affiliated Renren Xin app for facilitating loans with effective annualized interest rates as high as roughly 5,959%, arranged through an "online contract signing, offline private transfer" structure that evaded lending regulations. The day after the broadcast, market regulators and police in Chengdu's Jinjiang district sealed off the operating entity, and the company suspended its core IOU and loan-matching features. As of this research (September 2026), Jiedaibao remains a private company and there is no evidence it ever completed a public listing; CEO Wang Lu had said in 2018 that the company was considering a Hong Kong IPO "at an appropriate time," but no filing followed.