Alibaba in China is the largest e-commerce platform in the world. Beyond commerce, Alibaba provides a range of payment, credit and investment services almost entirely digitally without a branch network. Alibaba leverages its e-commerce data to assess risk and offer credit services to businesses and its electronic payments solution to channel mutual fund investments for the mass market.6

Alibaba is an example of a BigTech that uses the data collected by its e-commerce platform to assess risk in respect of the provision of credit products and services. However, there are risks associated with this approach.

11.1 Briefly explain cybersecurity and data privacy risks associated with the use of Big Data for financial services (12 marks).