Hong Kong has approved 4 more digital banking licenses for Tencent, Alibaba, Xiaomi and Ping An; the approvals are sure...
Alibaba’s Alipay was granted an eMoney license in Luxembourg to allow the company to serve customers across Europe; the eMoney...
China’s government has tried for many years to establish a credit system that rivals the U.S. and Europe, but has...
China has been looking to create a credit scoring system seen in many developed economies like the U.S. and the U.K.; initially asking 8 top companies to be involved, though they found it hard to form as companies were unwilling to share proprietary data with competitors; the PBoC is now tasked with having a industry wide system that does not favor giants like Alibaba and Tencent. Source.
While Alibaba’s Sesame Credit has increased access to loans in China the government recently told them to stop a national rollout of the program; John Gapper from the FT writes that there are three main issues behind social credit scores in China; technology companies have a more liberal attitude than banks when it comes to data; social credit scores seem to promote spending and more credit where as a traditional FICO score rewards a user for self control; the scores are proprietary to the companies who created them like Alibaba did with Sesame Credit. Source.
The company claims to be Hong Kong’s largest trade financing platform for SMEs; the $15 million Series A round was...
Kabbage will now power Alibaba’s Pay Later program which is offered to US buyers; Pay Later allows small businesses to...
In 2015 China’s Central Bank contracted eight companies, including affiliates of Tencent, Ping An and Alibaba, to help build a...
Tencent and Alibaba have built firms that enable them to write significant checks and have crowded out private equity and venture capital firms; SoftBank is the only other regional player on a similar level; they are not always driven by returns like traditional investors and this allows them to define success differently; some private equity firms are beginning to wonder if they are beginning to abuse their power; if a company receives investment from one of these giants they are also not held to the same pressures of a traditional investor like going public; these giants are helping to push innovation across the region and globe, but many are starting to ask at what cost. Source.
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.