The companies are shaking up the credit and retail industries yet again Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Lending Club Corp. aren’t names generally talked about when analysts, media pundits and the public talk about disruption. But on Tuesday they disrupted some very traditional and entrenched industries. Alibaba BABA, +0.54% the Chinese online marketplace, and peer-to-peer finance company Lending Club LC, -0.20% announced a partnership in which U.S. businesses can use up to $300,000 in Lending Club’s credit to purchase Chinese goods on Alibaba’s platform. Lending Club is using its standard model of matching investors with borrowers. It’s a ripple that could soon feel like a tsunami to some. That’s because the partnership takes direct aim at multiple targets. It is a salvo against U.S. online marketplace eBay Inc. EBAY, -0.18% and its PayPal unit. It’s a threat to online retailer Amazon Inc. AMZN, -0.33% And it is a challenge to existing Wall Street and Main Street banks and specialty finance companies such as CIT Group Inc. CIT, +2.90% For Lending Club, the partnership with Alibaba and its $8.5 billion in annual revenue, 40% annual growth, 30 million small-business accounts and 300 million customers is a home run for a lender whose usual market is individual borrowers and investors. Likewise, Alibaba’s partnership with Lending Club is a clever work-around given its issues with its China-based finance unit Alipay. In its filing for a U.S. public stock offering, Alibaba noted Alipay handles “substantially all of the payment processing and escrow services on our marketplaces.” But there’s a catch: It’sunder fire from Chinese regulators. As non-traditional, or tech-based alternatives, cut more of those deals, older industries — even many that have established themselves on the Internet (eBay, Amazon) — will find themselves under new competitive pressure. That’s good for borrowers and consumers, disruptive for the status quo and a lot for investors to consider. David Weidner