51 Credit Card wurde wegen illegaler Informationen angekündigt. Von einem Marktwert von zehn Milliarden Yuan bis zum "drei-losen" Automobilbau: Der Weg von Sun Haitao für "Neuunternehmertum" bleibt schwierig.
Introduction
On October 10, the National Cyber Security Notification Center released a bulletin involving 34 mobile applications that illegally collected and used personal information. The App "51 Credit Card Manager" under the listed company 51 Credit Card was among them for the same reason.
Since the news was announced, the stock price of 51 Credit Card's Hong Kong shares (2051.HK) has fallen for seven consecutive trading days. On October 16, it dropped by 10.39%. As of the time of writing, the stock price was HK$0.67, a cumulative decline of 22%.
Source: Baidu Stock Market Connect
After being investigated in 2019 for impersonating state organs and conducting soft - violent debt collection, 51 Credit Card's financial territory has shrunk significantly. In August this year, the company officially changed its name from 51 Credit Card to VALA, marking the transformation of its main business from fintech to new energy vehicles.
Although credit matching, which was the company's original source of success, is no longer the focus of 51 Credit Card, the goodwill loss caused by the continuous exposure of compliance risks buried during the business expansion period may still erode the unstable foundation of the new brand. After all, the last "serial entrepreneur" who crossed over from the credit field and loved to make a stir has been scolded off the Internet.
A Repeat Offender in Data Theft
The bulletin shows that after testing by the Ministry of Public Security, the above 34 mobile applications illegally collected and used personal information. There were 15 main problems, including not listing the purposes, methods, and scopes of collecting and using personal information one by one, not informing users of the purposes when applying for permissions to collect personal information, and advertising that misled or deceived users.
Among them, the APP "51 Credit Card Manager" of 51 Credit Card (now renamed "VALA") launched on the Android app store "Wandoujia" had two violations: "not listing the purposes, methods, and scopes of collecting and using personal information one by one" and "actually collecting personal information beyond the scope authorized by users".
In October 2019, a large number of police officers raided the office of 51 Credit Card in Hangzhou Xixi Valley. After entering the company's headquarters, the police went straight to the 15th floor where the data technology department was located, and CEO Sun Haitao was also taken away by the police for assistance in the investigation.
A police bulletin that night shocked the market: "51 Credit Card"'s outsourced debt collection company impersonated state organs and used soft - violent means such as intimidation and harassment to collect debts, which was suspected of crimes such as picking quarrels and provoking troubles. On that day, the stock price of 51 Credit Card crashed by more than 40% during intraday trading and was suspended urgently, with hundreds of millions of Hong Kong dollars in market value evaporating in one day.
At the end of December 2022, the Cyberspace Administration of Zhejiang Province investigated 173 illegal apps according to law. 51 Credit Card Manager was on the list for four problems: "not clearly indicating the purposes, methods, and scopes of collecting and using personal information", "collecting and using personal information without users' consent", "collecting personal information unrelated to the services provided in violation of the principle of necessity", and "providing personal information to others without consent".
51 Credit Card has repeatedly stumbled on personal information issues. Apart from the fact that regulatory authorities have paid more attention to the compliant collection and use of user information since the introduction of the "Personal Information Protection Law", it is largely due to its own business model.
As of the end of the second quarter of 2025, the "51 Credit Card Manager" App, a credit card management platform, had approximately 88.8 million registered users and managed approximately 153 million credit cards in total.
At the same time, the "51 Credit Card Manager" App is also one of the main bodies for the company's credit matching business. Its business model is similar to that of loan supermarkets such as Rong360. The difference is that 51 Credit Card has a built - in scenario advantage. It can evaluate users' credit risks based on the credit card bills, consumption records and other data authorized by credit card manager users, and match suitable loan products for users accordingly.
While the platform relies on user data to build risk models, which significantly improves the risk control level, it is also prone to over - collecting personal information, leading to data abuse, leakage or illegal transactions. Especially for data related to personal credit, once leaked, it can easily cause economic losses and even fraud cases.
Therefore, regulators are continuously strengthening the review of data collection by financial apps. More than a month ago, another mainstream credit card management platform, "Caniu Credit Card Manager", with over 80 million users, was also notified by the Ministry of Public Security because it actually collected personal information beyond the necessary scope of relevant functions.
The Glory and Decline of the Credit Card "Magic Weapon"
The story of 51 Credit Card is a typical record of ups and downs in the business world.
In 2012, serial entrepreneur Sun Haitao found in the process of entrepreneurship that it was very troublesome for himself and his friends to manage multiple credit card bills, and it was easy to forget the repayment date, which would damage their credit. This common "pain point" made him see business opportunities.
In a hotel near Hangzhou Xixi Wetland, Sun Haitao and his team spent a month developing "51 Bill" (later renamed "51 Credit Card"), with the core function of "one - click intelligent full - bill management". By integrating data from multiple platforms such as banks and consumer finance companies, it provided users with services such as bill query and repayment reminder, becoming a financial tool app that was a savior for credit card slaves.
During the heyday of the traffic dividend, 51 Credit Card showed amazing business sense and expansion ambition. Not satisfied with just being a tool, it quickly launched a "three - stage rocket" - style business fission: from credit card management, it extended to online credit card application referral, and finally entered the then - hottest P2P lending field, launching credit products such as "51 Renpin Loan" in 2015.
By matching loan targets to investment services, 51 Credit Card formed a closed - loop between the capital and asset sides. The positive cycle of its investment and lending business also brought about rapid business growth. This transformation turned it from a tool platform into a fintech "mini - giant" integrating wealth management and credit. In 2017, before its listing, the company's credit matching amount exceeded 30 billion yuan, and the P2P business accounted for more than 70% of the total revenue.
With a clear business model and a snowballing amount of user data, 51 Credit Card became a favorite in the capital market. Before its listing, it successively received multiple rounds of financing from well - known institutions including Xiaomi, JD.com, and Xinhu Zhongbao. On July 13, 2018, the company successfully listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at an issue price of HK$8.5, raising nearly HK$1 billion, and its market value once exceeded HK$10 billion.
In the year of listing, the number of 51 Credit Card's partner banks increased from 19 in 2017 to 24. The number of credit cards issued during the year reached a new high of 2.7 million, and it managed nearly 20% of the credit cards in China in total. The annual revenue was 2.812 billion yuan, and the net profit reached 2.169 billion yuan, nearly tripling year - on - year.
However, after the headquarters was investigated in 2019, 51 Credit Card's crisis broke out. Under the trend of strong supervision, the company launched a "dual reduction" policy, and the scale of its P2P business shrank sharply and reached zero in 2020. In 2022 and 2024, 51 Credit Card successively lost its micro - lending license and payment license. The company's performance was also severely hit: from 2019 to 2024, 51 Credit Card's revenue declined from 204.5 million yuan to 22.5 million yuan, with a cumulative loss of 322 million yuan during the same period. It only achieved a meager profit of 1.1 million yuan in 2023.
The reaction in the capital market was even more brutal. Since the crisis broke out in 2019, the stock price of 51 Credit Card has been in a slump, lingering in the "penny stock" range below HK$1 for a long time, with a decline of more than 99% compared with the market value of over HK$10 billion at the beginning of listing.
With the collapse of the main business and the sharp decline of the stock price, under a series of blows, Sun Haitao also began to look for a way out for 51 Credit Card outside the financial field. During the continuous loss period, the company tried to cross - border transform several times, successively testing the waters in fields such as SaaS, camping, and children's amusement. However, judging from the results, its transformation path has not achieved obvious results.
As of the first half of 2024, the SaaS segment surpassed credit matching to become the company's largest source of income, but the income scale of 46 million yuan was far from the peak of the credit business in the past. During the same period, as the domestic and foreign tourism markets heated up again, the camping business, which once briefly pulled the company out of losses, also showed signs of decline, with revenue of less than 9 million yuan.
It's Difficult for VALA to Overtake on a Detour by Taking Shortcuts
In early 2024, VALA, a new energy multi - purpose vehicle brand under 51 Credit Card, was launched. At the end of the year, the first model, VALA Pro, was officially released, with a starting price of 268,000 yuan and a cruising range of 505 kilometers.
In the eyes of Sun Haitao, a hardcore outdoor enthusiast, the limited growth of the camping business is because it is difficult to standardize and scale up campsites. However, camping vehicles can make the accommodation and party units of campsites movable, creating a third space with aesthetics and creativity.
He boasted that the emergence of VALA is the "iPhone moment in the automotive industry", with the vision of creating a new species in the electric vehicle life. According to the official summary, VALA's advantages are reflected in three aspects: First, zero - cost exposure. It started quickly through short - videos, with about 2.74 million fans across the network and the cumulative playback volume of relevant videos exceeding 750 million times; Second, a co - creator network. VALA did not spend a lot of money to build stores or enter 4S shops. Instead, it recruited car owners as co - creators for sales and commission sharing; Third, no fixed stores. An open space plus two or three cars can open a store, saving huge fixed costs. Relying on the co - creators' own business venues, VALA has opened 30 "experience centers" across the country.
Using the logic of fast - moving consumer goods for big - ticket consumer goods and using the label of "lifestyle" to make the brand break through the category competition of traditional new energy vehicles, VALA's business model is quite subversive. However, the long chain between "planting the grass" and "reaping" cannot be ignored: cars are low - frequency, high - price consumer goods. The cycle from being attracted to finally placing an order may be as long as several months. The marketing team needs great patience for long - term content layout and user mind - set cultivation.
Short - video marketing can only cover the stages of demand awareness and information collection. In the subsequent consumption decision - making, use, and feedback, the brand still has to prove itself in terms of products and services. The asset - light model of "no factory", "no store", and "no sales" is prone to expose its shortcomings at this time. On Xiaohongshu, there are occasional posts of potential buyers being deterred by VALA's "aloof" pre - sales style, which makes people question the professionalism and stability of its service.
In the first three quarters of this year, VALA delivered 99, 126, and 117 cars respectively, with an average of only 1.25 cars sold per day. According to the current sales progress, it is far from achieving the annual sales target of 2000 cars.
Ultimately, RVs are still a niche product in China. Even SAIC Maxus, a leading company, only sells about 250 RVs per quarter. The authenticity of market demand for the relatively blank new energy "bed car" track remains to be verified.
The outside world's evaluation has not shaken Sun Haitao's determination to bet on camping vehicles. In an exclusive interview, Sun Haitao revealed his true feelings, "Constantly making a stir is probably the fate of entrepreneurs."
On the Xiaohongshu platform, Sun Haitao is still actively operating under the ID "Carpenter Sun". He not only continuously posts videos related to VALA products, making full use of the host IP, but also frequently leads the team on long - distance self - driving trips: driving 2600 kilometers across the Sichuan - Tibet line, from Hangzhou to the uninhabited area of Hami, Xinjiang.
Conclusion
As a new player in a niche consumer category, VALA with limited brand power cannot completely copy the model of luxury brands. Building a lifestyle brand is destined to be a long - term investment that cannot bring an immediate surge in sales. It requires the enterprise to have sufficient strategic determination.
At the same time, the "backlash effect" of the traffic - driven approach is particularly obvious in the automotive industry. Any product defect or service problem may be magnified on social media, causing a public relations crisis and a devastating blow to the brand. Previously, a Xiaohongshu blogger @Hi Keleier shared in a video that when test - driving at the VALA headquarters, he met Sun Haitao but was given a cold shoulder. This was very different from his amiable persona on the Internet, which made the blogger, who was a fan, feel disillusioned, and many netizens in the comment section said they were "put off".
The competition of lifestyle brands lies in the continuous consumption rights among specific groups. If there is no solid experience to create dreams for users, it is questionable how a brand can infinitely extend the lifestyle for users with just novel short - videos and a so - called "experience center" with two or three cars.