A total of 33 institutions - including JD.com, dangdang.com, lakala.com, and UFIDA Software - founded the first internet financial organization in China on August 9.

The Zhongguancun Internet Financial Association aims to allocate the resources of internet finance,promote communication between enterprises and with the country’s financial regulatory departments, make industry rules and ensure a healthy future for the industry.

Internet finance - a combination of internet and finance - is a newly emerging industry and is also a way of doing financial business with the help of the internet. Advanced technologies - relating to the internet, mobile payment, search engines, big data, social networks and cloud computing - have helped to solve some weaknesses of market information, attracting both sellers and buyers to do business online.

Zhongguancun, China’s internet technology center and also the national financial innovation center of science and technology, offers an ideal base to develop internet finance.

In the past few years, the number of internet financing agencies in Zhonguancun - such as third party payers, peer-to-peer platforms, and online fund-raising - has increased rapidly.

In addition, e-business enterprises, such as JD.com and Alibaba, are ready to get involved in the financial field. They are using the data and information they own about deals and customer credit to create additional financial value by offering financial services to small enterprises – which is unlike banks’ translational business.

As a new industry, internet finance has its weaknesses, especially in enterprise credit management. To solve this problem, a credit information platform for internet finance was also launched on August 9 - to make enterprise credit information and the credit evaluation system easily accessible. Officials also aim to establish a Zhongguancun data exchange market to complete the internet financial market.

Edited by Wang Yifei and Niva Whyman