French based payments app Lydia has raised a $45mn series B round led by Tencent with existing investors CNP Assurances,...
Chinese giants Tencent and Ant Financial have found value in the buy now pay later industry with the companies buying...
WeChat Pay will begin rolling out a credit rating for their 600 million users; the credit rating uses AI to...
The Hong Kong-listed company is, according to one banker at HSBC, the answer to Facebook, WhatsApp, Spotify, Kindle and ApplePay, but all under one roof; based in Shenzhen, considered the Silicon Valley of China, they employ 3,000 people where over half are focused on research and development; they also have a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio; they are one of the top three companies in China and have successfully expanded worldwide with apps like WeChat. Source
Prior to the license, the company operated as a platform for other third party funds to sell products through their wealth management platform Qian.qq.com and WeChat; now the company will be able to sell direct to its nearly 1 billion users; the company already had licenses for mobile payments, insurance and micro finance. Source
I examine how $6.4 billion real estate brokerage Compass stacks up against the digital wealth and lending companies with a similar go-to-market strategy, and provide some ideas as to why it is successful. Compelling questions also emerge when looking on how technologies like AR/VR are commoditizing the property brokerage experience. Compass, a residential real estate startup that built out a platform for brokers -- proprietary and external -- and has recently raised $370 million at a $6.4 billion valuation. I found the language and positioning sort of eery, in how similar it was to the story in industries I closely follow. It even bought a CRM earlier this year, not unlike AdvisorEngine buying Junxure, or Salesforce getting into financial verticals. What I did find unusual, was the absolutely massive valuation.
The Chinese tech giant Tencent has purchased a 5% stake in Afterpay worth A$390 million (US$252 million) according to the...
Tencent has launched its credit scoring service, Tencent Credit Score, Tencent's counterpart to Ant Financial's Sesame Credit; for now, only QQ Vips can have access to their score (QQ is a social network tool developed by Tencent, popular among teenagers); credit scores range from 300 to 850; the score measures a person on five different aspects including credit history, security, wealth, consuming habits and social network. Source (Chinese)
China International Capital Corporation (CICC), China’s HK-listed tier 1 investment bank, announced on Wednesday that it will introduce Tencent as a strategic shareholder (4.95%); CICC says the company will be able to provide more customized wealth management products and services through its cooperation with Tencent in terms of targeted marketing and big data analysis; the two parties will establish a “strategic cooperation committee” that composed of executives from both companies to facilitate the cooperation; the deal is pending regulatory approval. Source (Chinese)
The Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau issued the year’s first fund sales license to Tencent Holdings; the company will operate as Teng An Fund Sales; WeChat adds a police certified facial recognition technology as part of a pilot program they hope to roll out to all of China in late January; some loans on HNA’s p2p platform JBH have dealt with deferred payments a since November. Source.