Tag "Alibaba"
Ant Group Close to Acquiring Dutch Payments Firm MultiSafepay for US$200 Million
Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba Group, is in advanced negotiations to acquire Dutch payment company MultiSafepay. The deal, pending regulatory approval, is estimated to value MultiSafepay at approximately US$200 million according to a source. MultiSafepay, founded in 1999, specialises
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Jack Ma Steps Down From Ant Group: The Inside Story
Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of Alibaba Group, is giving up control of the fintech unit Ant Group after China cracked down on the tech giant. Ma, one of China’s wealthiest men, has agreed to give up his voting rights
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China’s E-Commerce: Resilient Amidst Economic Downturn
With a population of 1.4 billion, China has all the makings of a hotbed for e-commerce, a match made in heaven. According to Global Data, the most populous country has a compound annual growth rate of 13.3 percent between 2018 and 2021,
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How China’s Virtual Banks Are Offering Loans to Micro-Businesses Within Minutes
In China, online lenders are filling the credit gap, leveraging cutting edge technology including artificial intelligence (AI) to make lending decision in just a second. E-commerce giant Alibaba’s MyBank and Internet conglomerate Tencent’s WeBank, have dramatically changed the domestic financial
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Soon You Might Not Need An Internet Connection to Make Payments Using WeChat
In July, Tencent’s super-app WeChat ran a trial that enabled passengers of two Spring Airlines flights between Shanghai and Chengdu to make offline payments while flying, reports Abacus. Passengers could sign up for the trial service, called WeChat on the
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How is China’s Smallest Province Hainan Attracting Fintech Giants Like Tencent
Since president Xi Jinping announced a plan to gradually turn Hainan into a pilot free trade zone by 2020 and transform the location into a free trade port by the year 2025, Internet giants and fintech firms are flocking in.
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How China is Quietly Shaping Asia’s Fintech
When one considers China’s influence on the rest of Asia, it is often seen as a benchmark; how China’s dramatic move into a cashless society has financially emboldened more of its populace, created more financial inclusivity for the underserved thus
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Competition Heats up for Japan’s Mobile Payments Market
Mobile payments is rapidly becoming a dynamic market in Japan as the government pushes to increase cashless payments to 40% of transactions by 2025 from 20% in 2016. Japan is a highly cash-dependent society with cash in circulation amounting to
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How China’s Fintech Giants are Tapping into a US$ 600 Billion Market
China’s tech giants Alibaba and Tencent are going after global remittances, a market that sees more than US$600 billion being moved around the world annually, according to the World Bank. The two firms recently launched cross-border money transfer services to
Read MoreTheir Business Faced Roadblocks, So Didi is Now Mirroring Alibaba’s Fintech Game Plan
The company that drove Uber out of China, Didi Chuxing, comes into the new year embroiled in controversy. About a month ago, Didi announced a major restructuring—the latest development in series of platform tweaks after it came out that the
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