Quantitative funds' move away from finance has become a cover-up: Yang Xiaomie is acting against the trend, and Bianli Card is offering an annualized return of 36% to harvest consumers.

On March 13, the National Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau, in conjunction with multiple departments, issued a consumer risk warning for installment malls, directly addressing three major industry issues: cash recycling, bundled charges, and privacy leaks. It clearly requires institutions to standardize the disclosure of comprehensive financing costs and to eliminate inducement lending and hidden fees. At the same time as regulatory crackdowns intensify, the Hong Kong-listed company Quantitative Group’s core platform, Yang Xiaomiao, remains deeply tied to the related financial tool, Bian Li Card, disguising high-interest lending under the guise of e-commerce. It profits from irregular means such as artificially inflated product pricing, layered interest and fees, and gray cash recycling loops. Third-party complaint platforms have accumulated over 30,000 related consumer protection claims, leaving consumers mired in high-interest traps with little recourse, as a financial harvest disguised as new retail continues to unfold.

Double Harvesting Scheme: Product Markup Combined with Hidden High Interest, Comprehensive Cost Capped at 36%

Yang Xiaomiao presents itself as a comprehensive e-commerce platform, with homepage product displays and marketing activities indistinguishable from conventional online shopping platforms. Customer service even creates a false impression of compliance with anti-fraud tips. However, its profit logic has long deviated from normal retail practices, establishing a dual harvesting system of product markup and high-interest installments, becoming a hotspot for consumer complaints.

User testing and rights protection information show that the pricing of core categories like digital products and gold jewelry on the platform significantly deviates from market fair prices, with markup generally ranging from 20% to 60%. For example, a popular smartphone package is priced several thousand yuan higher than mainstream e-commerce platforms, and even when including accessory costs, the markup remains close to 40%; gold jewelry and luxury accessories, which are easy to liquidate, are priced even higher, with some products exceeding a 60% markup per gram, far beyond the normal industry markup range. This exorbitant pricing does not stem from product value but embeds hidden financial costs into the selling price, effectively evading interest rate regulations.

The Bian Li Card, which supports high markup consumption, exhibits obvious violations in interest and fee disclosures. The platform page only highlights inducive information such as credit limits and loan speeds, without prominently disclosing the actual annualized interest rate. The composition of interest and fees mixes multiple charges such as interest, guarantee fees, consultation fees, and account service fees, deliberately obscuring the comprehensive financing costs. Multiple user calculations show that using Bian Li Card for installment shopping or cash withdrawals leads to actual annualized interest rates hitting the judicial protection limit of 36%, with some orders that combine service fees and product markups incurring even higher real financial costs.

Some consumers borrowed 16,000 yuan to be repaid in 12 installments, with monthly payments exceeding 1,600 yuan, resulting in an annualized interest rate of 36%; another user spent over 110,000 yuan in total, with total repayments approaching 150,000 yuan, and interest on over ten orders exceeded reasonable ranges, incurring nearly 40,000 yuan in unreasonable fees. In the face of numerous complaints, the platform has long evaded responsibility, neither adjusting rates nor refunding the illegally collected excess interest, effectively blocking consumer rights protection channels.

70% Cash Recycling Gray Industry Loop: Shopping Becomes Cash Withdrawal, Privacy Leaks Become Industry Unwritten Rules

Even more concealed than high-interest charges is the gray industrial chain of shopping cash recycling spawned by the collaboration between Yang Xiaomiao and Bian Li Card, which completely strays from the original intent of consumer installment plans and devolves into an illegal channel for fund circulation. Bian Li Card’s built-in mall directly redirects to Yang Xiaomiao, allowing users to complete the entire process from credit activation, product ordering, to cash recycling without needing to receive the products, forming a complete illegal loop.

According to industry norms, after users purchase products at high prices on the platform, third-party recyclers offer around 70% of the price back, seemingly absorbing the high price differential loss, but in reality, this is a trade-off for short-term liquidity at the cost of premiums and interest fees. One user purchased a tablet for nearly 5,700 yuan on installment, ultimately receiving only around 3,300 yuan back. Behind this double loss, the platform profits through markup, installment interest fees, and service fees, while all risks and costs are transferred to consumers.

Even more concerning is that the cash recycling industrial chain is accompanied by serious personal information leakage issues. Multiple users have reported that after registering or placing orders on the platform, they immediately received targeted promotional text messages and friend requests for cash recycling, with the other party able to understand their consumption and credit records in detail, resulting in continuous harassment. Testing after account registration revealed a similar influx of diversion information in a short time, proving that the platform has significant vulnerabilities in user information sharing and privacy protection, starkly contradicting its commitments to compliant operations.

Equity Maneuvering to Avoid Regulation: Quantitative Group’s Financialization Attempt is Merely a Disguise to Cut Ties

Since its listing, Quantitative Group has publicly claimed to promote a financialization transformation, terminating loan facilitation services and making commitments to regulators, attempting to shape an image as a pure e-commerce platform. However, upon examining equity and business ties, it becomes apparent that this so-called transformation is merely superficial. Yang Xiaomiao and Bian Li Card maintain a deeply bound relationship through equity changes, personnel overlaps, and business nesting to evade regulatory scrutiny.

The operating entity of Bian Li Card, Beijing Zimu Yunchuang, was formerly known as Tianjin Quantitative Group, and has recently completed shareholder changes, seemingly breaking away from the Quantitative Group system. In reality, the actual controller shares a high degree of overlap with core enterprises of Quantitative Group. Beijing Liankebang, as a related entity of Quantitative Group, has its legal representative also controlling the operator of Bian Li Card. Although Quantitative Group’s founder Zhou Hao claims to have transferred equity, he remains the top shareholder of Liankebang, with capital and personnel ties never truly severed.

Business collaboration is even tighter, as Bian Li Card exclusively channels traffic to Yang Xiaomiao, and both parties share user data, credit information, and order records, forming an integrated system of traffic, risk control, payment, and cash recycling. Financial data further elucidates the issue, as Yang Xiaomiao contributes nearly 98% of Quantitative Group’s revenue, with a gross profit margin of 97.5% in 2024, far exceeding conventional e-commerce industry levels; the high gross profit core is precisely the product markup and hidden interest fees. The disproportionately high revenue share from jewelry and accessories also indirectly confirms the platform’s true intent to design its product structure around cash recycling demands.

The microfinance institutions providing funding support for the platform are controlled by the operator of Bian Li Card, forming a complete chain loop from funding supply, scenario setup to fee harvesting, which explains the root cause of why high-interest chaos has long gone unregulated.

Loan Facilitation Disguised as E-commerce: Substantive Violations, Touching Multiple Regulatory Red Lines

Yang Xiaomiao was formerly a loan facilitation platform known as Credit Wallet, and the essence of Quantitative Group’s transformation is to package loan facilitation services as consumer installments, using the e-commerce scenario as a cover to continue high-margin financial business. Previously, the gross profit margin of loan facilitation matching services approached 99%. After terminating direct loan facilitation, the platform shifted to a model of high markup products and hidden installments, indirectly conducting credit business, essentially disguised lending under the guise of consumption.

This model has evidently violated regulatory provisions: financial regulatory authorities clearly require that loan business must prominently disclose annualized interest rates, and comprehensive financing costs must include all guarantee and service fees. It is strictly prohibited to indirectly elevate rates through consultation and service fees, and platform institutions are not allowed to collect interest and fees directly from borrowers. In comparison, Bian Li Card has not standardized disclosure of interest rates, and multi-layered charges have increased comprehensive costs; Yang Xiaomiao has collected hidden interest in advance through product markups; both parties refuse to rectify in the face of numerous complaints, clearly constituting violations.

At this critical juncture, when regulatory warnings are frequent and the March 15 consumer rights protection focuses on financial chaos, Yang Xiaomiao and Bian Li Card continue to violate regulations, infringing upon consumers’ rights to information and fair trade, and disrupting the order of the consumer finance market. The façade of financialization from Quantitative Group, while secretly clinging to financial profit-making operations, will ultimately face regulatory accountability and market backlash. For consumers, it is essential to remain vigilant against such high-interest platforms disguised as e-commerce, refuse to participate in cash recycling activities, and promptly seek recourse through regulatory channels when encountering illegal charges.

Source: Jiuzhou Business Observation

Author: Jiu Qiu Xiaomei

Disclaimer: This article is for knowledge sharing only, intended to convey more information! This article does not constitute any investment advice, and anyone making investment decisions based on this article does so at their own risk.