Today, Alipay's reach extends to almost every aspect of life related to money. When Alibaba launched consumer e-commerce platform Taobao to rival eBay in China, Alipay was introduced as a payments method to boost users' trust in the platform. “The scale of fintech in China dwarfs the regular financial transaction potential in the United States.”Īlipay evolved from e-commerce giant Alibaba, which was founded by Jack Ma in 1999 to help match buyers and sellers in China's fast growing market. “Ant Group is so valuable because Alipay is used on a day to day basis by a billion people on all of their purchases,” said Rein. In restaurants, groups of friends often split the bill by transferring money to each other using their digital wallets, similar to how the Venmo app is used in the U.S.
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Instead, cashiers scan a QR code on a customer’s smartphone to deduct money from their Alipay or WeChat Pay digital wallets. Walk into a supermarket in China and one would be hard-pressed to find a customer digging around for loose change to pay for groceries. “On the Alipay platform, you pay for things, you buy insurance, you buy wealth management. “Think of Alipay as Visa, MasterCard, Citibank, Fidelity… all rolled up into one,” said Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai. “We are betting that Ant Group will be able to grow at a very high pace in the future.”Īlipay and WeChat Pay have helped make Chinese society virtually cashless, at least in big cities, with consumers and merchants alike relying on digital payments using their phones. It has a lot of businesses in other areas and with other services that would help 1.3 billion people in China,” Jackson Wong, asset management director at Amber Hill Capital Ltd., said in an interview. “Ant Group is much more than PayPal which only processes financial payments. The Shanghai debut has yet to be announced.Įven before announcing its IPO plans, Ant Group was the world’s most valuable fintech company, with a valuation of $150 billion after a 2018 fundraising round. It is due to begin trading in Hong Kong on Nov.
To tap both Chinese and global investors, Ant Group is listing its shares both in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Ahead of the IPO, the company will be valued at about $280 billion. Thanks to the huge scale and potential of China’s fintech landscape, Ant Group is poised to raise about $34.5 billion in the world’s largest share offering, beating Saudi Aramco’s previous record of $29.4 billion. “Now when I go out, I don’t even need to carry my wallet, all I need is my phone,” said Su, one of over a billion Alipay users in China and abroad.Īlipay, operated by Ant Group, is the world’s largest and most valuable financial technology (fintech) company and one of two dominant Chinese digital wallets in China, the other being rival Tencent’s WeChat Pay. Instead of cash, in recent years she has done almost all her business using the digital wallet Alipay –- shopping in a mall, buying stuff online or transferring money to friends. HONG KONG - Stella Su, who lives and works in Shanghai, has used an ATM only once in the past year.
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