What is a hui? (會 / 标会)
A hui is a Chinese rotating credit association in which members contribute each round and the pot goes either in a drawn order (lottery hui) or, in the widespread bidding form (biaohui), to whoever offers the highest interest to the others. The bid functions as a market price for taking money early.
Also known as: biaohui 标会 (bidding hui) · hụi / họ (Vietnam) · yaohui (lottery hui). It is one of 70+ regional forms of the ROSCA — rotating savings and credit association — used by an estimated 2+ billion people worldwide.
How a hui works
- An organizer (the hui head) recruits members and usually takes the first pot interest-free as compensation.
- In a bidding hui, each round the members who have not yet collected submit interest bids; the highest bid wins the pot.
- The winner then pays the elevated contribution (principal plus their bid) in subsequent rounds, so patient members effectively earn interest.
- The cycle completes when every member has collected once.
Role and reach
Hui financed generations of small business — famously among Chinese immigrant communities in Southeast Asia and North America, where restaurant and laundry startups were capitalized by rotating credit long before banks would lend to them. In Vietnam the same institution operates as hụi; in Korea its cousin is the kye.
The bidding hui is economically sophisticated — interest rates emerge from supply and demand each round — but it concentrates risk in the organizer. "Hui collapse" (倒会), when a head absconds or a chain of huis unravels, is a recurring story in communities that rely on them.
How it differs from other ROSCAs
- The bid is expressed as interest paid to others (raising later contributions), whereas ROSCASH’s auction is a discount on the payout — economically similar, mechanically simpler.
- The organizer customarily takes the first pot, an unpriced privilege and the main failure point.
- Records are private notebooks; disputes have no neutral arbiter.
The digital version
ROSCASH keeps the market logic of the biaohui — early liquidity has a price set by bidding — but removes the organizer’s unpriced first pot and puts every contribution and payout on a public ledger.
The mechanics are documented in the circle guide, and the honest questions — custody, "is this a pyramid?", where returns come from — in the FAQ.
See how ROSCASH circles work →