Ant Financial Services Group (Chinese: ????), formerly known as Alipay, is an affiliate company of the Chinese Alibaba Group. Ant Financial is the highest valued fintech company in the world, and the world's most valuable unicorn (start-up) company, with a valuation of US$150 billion.
Video Ant Financial
History
Alipay was rebranded as Ant Financial Services on 16 October 2014. In 2015, Ant Financial raised $4.5 billion in a funding round with investors such as China Investment Corp (CIC), CCB Trust, China Life, China Post Group, China Development Bank Capital and Primavera Capital Group. In 2015, the company was valued at about $45 billion. As of 26 April 2016, Ant Financial had around 450 million annual active users, with Credit Suisse estimating that 58% of China's online payment transactions went through Alipay. In September 2016, Ant Financial bought EyeVerify Inc.
By late January 2017, Ant Financial had a valuation of $60 billion. At the time, the Wall Street Journal called Ant "a juggernaut of online banking, fund management and other financial services." Some analysts valued it around $70 billion, and "predict it could soon be worth over $100 billion," above the market capitalization of Goldman Sachs Group at $95 billion. On January 26, 2017, Ant Financial Services Group announced a deal to acquire MoneyGram International for $880 million. After the announcement, Ant's stock rose 8.8%. The deal failed after approval was not granted from the CFIUS.
Since roughly 2015, the company has been one of several technology partners in the Chinese government's Social Credit System programme.
In September 2017, it is announced that Ant Financial will be forming a joint venture with Sir Li Ka-shing's CK Hutchison Holdings to bring a digital wallet service in Hong Kong.
On 9 June 2018, the company raised around US$14 billion, which the Times of India called "the biggest-ever single fund-raising globally by a private company".
Maps Ant Financial
Services
It operates Alipay, the world's largest mobile and online payments platform as well as Yu'e Bao, the world's largest money-market fund.It also runs the Sesame Credit credit rating system. As of September 2017, Ant Financial unveiled its facial recognition payment technology through its Alipay services.
Subsidiaries and joint ventures
The financial company Koubei was created as a joint venture in 2015 by Alibaba and Ant Financial Services Group. As of 26 April 2016, Ant Financial operates the money-market fund Yu'e Bao and the online bank called MYbank.
Ranking
In 2017, Ant Financial was ranked sixth in Fortune's Change the World list, recognized for the positive environmental impact of Ant Forest, the world's largest platform for tracking individuals' carbon footprints. Ant Forest allows users to collect "energy points" through their actions in the real world that can be used to grow virtual and ultimately real trees, with 230 million users of Alipay activating Ant Forest accounts. Ant Financial and its partners, including environmental NGOs the SEE Foundation and China Green Foundation, have thus far planted 10.25 million trees, equivalent to a 1.22 million-ton reduction in CO2 emissions.
References
External links
- Antgroup.com
Source of the article : Wikipedia