Asian Tech Press (Sep 2) -- Ant Group, Alibaba's financial affiliate, is partnering with several state-backed firms to set up a personal credit-scoring company, and it is expected to be set up in October at the earliest, Reuters quoted sources as saying on Wednesday.

The joint venture was set up as part of restructuring ordered by Chinese regulators who halted Ant's IPO in November last year.

It is worth noting that this is the second time this year that news has come out of the market that Ant will form a joint venture with state-owned enterprise to address consumer data issues.

In late June, The Wall Street Journal cited sources familiar with the matter as saying that Ant was negotiating with state-owned enterprises to form a credit scoring company that would bring Ant's consumer data under regulators' purview.

Both Ant and People's Bank of China (PBOC), China's central bank, did not comment on the reports at that time.

And now, according to Reuters, five companies -- Ant Group, Zhejiang Tourism Investment Group Co Ltd, Zhejiang Electronic Port, Hangzhou Financial Investment Group Co.,Ltd. and Transfar Group Co., Ltd. -- will set up a new joint venture for a personal credit-scoring company to handle the consumer data of more than 1 billion people currently in Ant's possession.

In addition, the report says the joint venture will help revive Ant's IPO, which would have been the world’s biggest.

Sources familiar with the matter said the report was not allowed to be widely distributed in China, and the information that had been published was removed by the relevant platforms for reasons of violation.

With China's data security law coming into effect in September, the country's regulation of data is getting stricter by the day. And the establishment of a joint venture between Ant and state-owned companies, has become a better choice for the fintech giant to deal with data security.