Zhima Credit has frequently been mistaken for the Social Credit System.

In 2015, the PBOC designated eight private companies to pilot personal credit reporting (zhengxin) mechanisms. Because the pilot programs were zhengxin mechanisms, they had little connection to the idea of social credit more broadly. Zhima Credit was one of the pilot zhengxin mechanisms. It was an opt-in scoring initiative proposed to assess users' credit worthiness even if those users lacked formal credit history. It