Are You Creditworthy? The Algorithm Will Decide.

Money2020, the largest finance tradeshow in the world, takes place each year in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. At a recent gathering, above the din of slot machines on the casino floor downstairs, cryptocurrency startups pitched their latest coin offerings, while on the main stage, PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman made an impassioned speech to thousands about the globe's working poor and their need for access to banking and credit. The future, according to PayPal and many other companies, is algorithmic credit scoring, where payments and social media data coupled to machine learning will make lending decisions that another enthusiast argues are "better at picking people than people could ever be." There's now a whiff of a hope that big data might finally shore up the risky business of consumer credit. Credit in China is now in the hands of a company called Alipay, which uses thousands of consumer data points -- including what they purchase, what type of phone they use, what augmented reality games they play, and their friends on social media -- to determine a credit score.