Ant Financial

civilization and politics Embedded Finance paytech small business

·Jun. 3, 2019

$20 Billion TSYS acquisition in the shadow of Alibaba’s $500B SME aggregation

I have been reading Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built this week, something everyone interested in understanding the future of Google, Goldman, Uber, or Amazon should do. The narrative starts with China's small business explosion, and Ma's genius is to tap into global demand for the products of those businesses through an online marketplace and associated financial services. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let's pause to acknowledge a massive, systemic transaction that was announced this week: payments processing company Global Payments acquiring TSYS (Total Payments Systems) for $21.5 billion.

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Fintech News Roundup

·Feb. 2, 2018

Alibaba Takes 33 Percent Stake in Ant Financial

Alibaba announced it was taking a 33 percent stake in their fintech affiliate Ant Financial; the agreement allows for Alibaba to pick of shares of Ant Financial and also ends the revenue share agreement they had in place; TechCrunch reports the deal was focused on “certain intellectual property rights owned by Alibaba exclusively related to Ant Financial.”; Alibaba saw their shares drop after the announcement and many think this is a prelude to Ant Financial’s IPO. Source.

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Asia/Pac Fintech News Roundup

·Nov. 21, 2016

Alibaba’s Ant Financial Offers Opportunity for Widespread Fintech Industry Growth

At a financial forum in Shanghai, Jack Ma of Alibaba expressed his support for fintech innovation in digital banking that could further help China's inclusive finance efforts; the holding company founder's comments were centered around the capabilities of its affiliate Ant Financial, which offers a range of digital banking services; Jack Ma said capabilities from the platform could help other fintech firms to increase their financial inclusion business efforts; "We would like to entirely share with partners our capability of data collection and data processing to jointly develop the inclusive financial system," said Jack Ma; as a proponent for financial inclusion and fintech industry growth Jack Ma also said Ant Financial was a leading fintech market platform capable of partnering with other fintech companies for overall industry expansion. Source

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Asia/Pac Europe Fintech News Roundup

·Dec. 7, 2016

Alipay Signs Deal with European Merchants

The new head of Ant Financial's international operations, Douglas Feagin, helped ink a deal with 930,000 merchants across Europe to help Chinese travelers use Alipay; Doug Feagin explained to the Financial Times why the deal was done: "120 million Chinese travelers went abroad in 2015 and that's growing at 18% a year. The vast majority of whom use Alipay."; Alipay has now expanded into India, Europe and Southeast Asia; it is still looking to go public in the near future. Source

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Europe Fintech News Roundup USA

·Feb. 21, 2019

Announcements & Releases for February 21, 2019

Green Dot Eyes Banking-As-A-Service, Gen Z To Build On Q4 Growth $650 billion asset manager Franklin Templeton is embedding data...

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asset management credit unions/small banks digital transformation eCommerce philosophy

·Dec. 30, 2019

7,000 bank branches shut down and 425,000 jobs lost — melting Banking into a glass half full

Let's make a collective decision to see the glass as half-full. While physical banking (7,000 US branches gone during 2012-2017) and employment in the sector (425,000 jobs lost since 2013) has been contracting, digital commerce, banking, and investment management have been growing. Even DFA is finally giving in and lowering fees on their $600 billion institutional mutual fund family. Of course, Fintech has been a slow and gradual transformation, not a rapid disruption. We can make a choice to bemoan the loss of the past, or a choice to express an excitement for the future and participate in its making. Which side are you on?

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Asia/Pac Fintech News Roundup

·Mar. 27, 2017

Alibaba’s Affiliate Ant Financial Reporting Focus on Techfin

Ant Financial is building a new platform for selling money market funds online; it is also introducing "Fortune Accounts" which will sell a broad range of investment products to Chinese consumers through its wealth management app; the first companies to partner for the Fortune Accounts are Bosera Funds, Aegon-Industrial Fund, Tianhong Fund, China Southern Fund and CCB Principal Fund with more companies to be added in June when the platform launches; Ant Financial says it plans to only develop technology to improve platforms for financial institutions, branding itself as a techfin company with no plans to develop its own financial services. Source

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Fintech News Roundup USA

·Mar. 29, 2019

Alipay is Not Yet Looking to Launch for U.S. Customers

Chinese tourists are able to use Alipay at more than 200,000 U.S. locations but the company does not have plans...

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macroeconomics super app

·Jun. 15, 2020

Amazon/Goldman partnership, TikTok banking license, and Ethereum fintech through the lens of Aggregation Theory & Super Apps

If you are in finance and only looking at banks, you are missing out on the real change agents. Here's some cross-industry action that we will unpack this week.

Amazon selected Goldman Sachs to be the lender of choice for small business loans. TikTok maker ByteDance is working with a Singaporean business family to get a financial license. And small business bank Starling is integrating Slack, energy switching service Bionic, and health insurance provider Equipsme into their marketplace. And we might as well talk about the Plaid Exchange launch, and end on the computational economy of Ethereum.

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Europe Fintech News Roundup USA

·May. 11, 2018