The Cosun Group has issued notice that it would be defaulting on its high yield debt products equal to $45 million; Cosun raised $166 million through the Ant Financial platform and is now unable to meet obligations on a portion of that amount; this leaves investors asking when they will be repaid; Ant Financial is pressing to ensure repayments are made and has stated they would help pay legal bills if investors decide to sue; the fintech giant does not share the blame as they view themselves as a platform for investors to allocate capital, but they also understand the Ant Financial name carries weight and want to help make sure there is a resolution. Source
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
Ant Financial announced at Money 20/20 a partnership with payment processor First Data and hardware provider Verifone; new move will expand scope of their wallet product, AliPay, into North America and Europe for wealthy Chinese travelers; AliPay has 450 million active users, totaling nearly 70% of the third party payment market in China. Source
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
Alibaba's fintech arm, Ant Financial, is looking to increase their Asian market share before taking on more expansion plans worldwide; while at an event in Thailand to launch a partnership with payment firm Ascend, senior company officials explained the current focus is on 370 million people in Asia without bank accounts; in addition to the Thailand partnership, the company partnered with India's PayTM last year and has secured licenses to operate in Hong Kong; according to Senior Vice President, Douglas Feagin, there were no set plans or venue for a potential initial public offering, though there were benefits to going public. Source
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