JD.com and ZestFinance Announce JV to Expand Consumer Credit in China

Companies to Leverage Big Data to Provide Credit Risk Evaluation Services to Lenders in China


BEIJING and LOS ANGELES, June 26, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- JD.com (Nasdaq:JD), China's largest online direct sales company, and ZestFinance, a US-based financial technology company, today announced an agreement to launch a joint venture (JV), called JD-ZestFinance Gaia, to support the development of consumer credit in China. The JV will leverage ZestFinance's machine learning-based credit-decisioning technology and JD.com's reservoir of consumer data to provide credit risk evaluation services to companies in China. Additionally, as part of the agreement, JD.com is making an investment in ZestFinance to help fund further development of credit risk evaluation services for China and extend consumer access to credit.

"Chinese shoppers are hungry for convenient, reliable and fair credit channels," said JD Finance CEO Shengqiang Chen. "This requires both a systematic method for making decisions and a robust infrastructure that enables lenders to share data – neither of which is sufficiently developed yet in China. Today's announcement with ZestFinance, a leader in consumer credit evaluation, is a foundational step toward building a reliable system for assessing credit risk that will help meet the huge market need. We aim to be the single-stop solution for Chinese consumers to make all of their daily purchases, and this new JV with ZestFinance is another big step in our development."

Lenders in China lack the data typically used in established markets to determine creditworthiness, as Chinese consumers often have little-to-no credit history, leaving a huge gap. The ZestFinance big data credit-decisioning platform is highly applicable to the Chinese market because it accurately underwrites people without credit history. Instead of analyzing the limited number of credit variables most traditional underwriting methods consider, ZestFinance analyzes tens of thousands of data points to effectively evaluate creditworthiness. ZestFinance's big data approach considers information that traditional underwriting methods do not – such as anonymized consumers' online shopping habits. This technology will enable lenders in China to effectively predict risk, which, in turn, will expand Chinese consumers' access to fair credit.

"At ZestFinance, our mission is to provide fair and transparent credit to everyone everywhere in the world," said Douglas Merrill, Founder and CEO of ZestFinance. "We're excited to work with JD.com to create powerful consumer credit evaluation in China. As China uses advanced data science to make credit decisions, its underwriting will likely leapfrog approaches used by most lenders in established markets, which are based on technology created decades ago."

The JV will provide credit risk evaluation services to companies in China

JD-ZestFinance Gaia will develop and provide services that enable companies to determine creditworthiness of Chinese consumers, greatly expanding access to credit. It will combine JD.com's base of more than 100 million active customers – with ZestFinance's machine learning underwriting technology, to create credit risk evaluation services designed specifically for China.

As the first customer of the JV, JD.com will use the services to provide new credit offerings to consumers.

About ZestFinance

ZestFinance, Inc. is a financial services technology company that uses machine learning and data science to help companies make more accurate financial decisions. The result is increased credit availability for borrowers and higher repayment rates for lenders. The company was founded in September 2009 by Douglas Merrill, the former Chief Information Officer of Google. For more information, please visit www.zestfinance.com.

About JD.com

JD.com, Inc. is the largest online direct sales company in China. The company strives to offer consumers the best online shopping experience. Through its content-rich and user-friendly website jd.com and mobile applications, JD.com offers a wide selection of authentic products at competitive prices and delivers products in a speedy and reliable manner. The company believes it has the largest fulfillment infrastructure of any e-commerce company in China. As of March 31, 2015 JD.com operated 7 fulfillment centers and a total of 143 warehouses in 43 cities, and in total 3,539 delivery stations and pickup stations in 1,961 counties and districts across China, staffed by its own employees. The Company provides standard same-day delivery in more than 130 counties and districts, and standard next-day delivery in more than another 850 counties and districts across China.

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "confident" and similar statements. Among other things, the quotations from management in this announcement, as well as JD.com's strategic and operational plans, contain forward-looking statements. JD.com may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about JD.com's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in JD.com's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this press release is as of the date of this press release, and JD.com undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

For media and investor inquiries, please contact:

For ZestFinance
Jenny Galitz McTighe
323-450-3073
press@zestfinance.com

Megan Lamb
Cutline Communications
703-926-5292
megan@cutline.com

For JD.com
Josh Gartner
Senior Director of International Communications
+86 (10) 5895-9315
Press@JD.com

Ruiyu Li
Director of Investor Relations
+86 (10) 5895-5597
IR@JD.com


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