Ant Financial

Ant Financial Services Group is an online payment services provider. A primary competitor of PayPal, its platform, Alipay, is the world’s largest mobile and online payments platform. Founded by the Alibaba group, it allows individuals and businesses to execute payments online in a secure manner. Alipay’s users are primarily buyers and sellers engaging in e-commerce transactions. With a registered user base of approximately 900 million according to its 2018 report, Alipay is an accepted online payment method for many online retail websites and service providers in China.

Ant Financial have developed a complete online wallet which offers many services associated with payments while partnering with taxi-hailing services, cinema-theatre booking services and so on. One of its most popular products is Xianghubao, meaning “mutual protection” or literally “lend a helping hand”. Despite only being launched in late 2018, the product, made in collaboration with Trust Mutual Life Insurance, has already amassed 50 million users. Its aim is to provide basic health plans for 300 million people by 2021. In August 2019 the company hinted that Xinghubao may collaborate with insurance providers if its user base continued to grow at a strong rate.

Alipay has partnered with some leading Chinese banks including Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China; it also has a valuable partnership with Visa. In 2018, China Pacific Life announced it had upped its stake in Ant, as the pair plans to develop a series of tax-deferred pension insurance products and services.

In January 2020 it was revealed that Ant Financial had applied for a digital wholesale banking license in Singapore.

In July 2020 rumours began to circulate that the company was planning an IPO with a target valuation of over $200bn.

Later in 2020 it was confirmed Ant Group was planning to raise a potential record-breaking $34.4bn in its stock market debut. The IPO would value the company at around $312bn, and known investors include Alibaba, Temasek, and several large Chinese insurers.

In early November, days before the IPO, the listing was suspended, with the Chinese government citing 'major issues'. Jack Ma was called in for 'supervisory issues'.