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Ant’s global play is to be a payments aggregator and it now reaches 1B users • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in alibaba, alipay, Ant Financial, ant group, ant+, Fintech, jack ma, mobile payments, mobile wallet, WalletNo Comments

After trying for years to replicate the success of its QR code-enabled payments solution overseas, Ant Group seems to have finally found a path to scaling. Instead of going after end users, the Alibaba-affiliated fintech giant has been quietly forming partnerships with local payments providers in Asia. It’s built something akin to the Mastercard or Visa network for digital payments, allowing consumers to travel easily with their mobile wallet from home. Ant dubs the payments processing network Alipay+ to distinguish it from Alipay, its consumer-facing wallet that has become ubiquitous in China. Alipay+ has integrated 15 payment methods, giving it a reach of over one billion users, Angel Zhao, president of international business at Ant Group, said during the Singapore Fintech Festival on Thursday. To create a network effect, Alipay+ has been busy onboarding merchants. It’s supporting over 2.5 million businesses around the world today. A Filipino tourist visiting Japan, for instance, can pull up their GCash wallet and pay at a store that supports Alipay+ by scanning a QR code; they can also display their wallet’s QR code for the cashier to scan. Similarly, a traveler from South Korea can pay at the store with Kakao Pay, and so can a Malaysian tourist with Touch ‘n Go. All the while, Alipay+ has automatically calculated and done the currency conversion part. Alipay+ charges enterprise software fees acting as a cross-border payments and merchant marketing solution provider, a spokesperson for Ant tells ZebethMedia. But how would a user of GCash know about Alipay+ in the first place? China’s internet giants are never short of customer acquisition tactics, and subsidy is one. On the landing page of GCash, users can find an entry to a list of merchant deals provided that they pay with Alipay+. At Shein’s pop-up store in Manila, Alipay+ gives users a PHP 130 or $2 discount at checkout. Other Alipay+ partnering wallets across Asia have similarly incorporated these perks. The appeal of Alipay+ for merchants, on the other hand, is that one billion consumers can conveniently pay at their stores. That might sound impressive, but keep in mind that Alipay, which is unsurprisingly included in the Alipay+ alliance, alone boasted 700 million monthly users already in 2020 thanks to China’s sheer internet population. Alipay+ perks via GCash / Image: Ant Group Interestingly, Zhao stressed at the event that Alipay+ isn’t trying to be a super app — the type of mini app-powered ecosystem exemplified by WeChat and Alipay in China. Rather, it’s serving as an infrastructure layer for other consumer-oriented wallets. “While many of you are familiar with the success of Alipay in China, Alipay+ is not another SuperApp we are launching globally. Built on top of the technology capabilities and know-how of Alipay, Alipay+ offers cross-border digital payment and marketing solutions connecting global merchants, online and offline, with multiple e-wallets and payment methods from different countries and regions and helping the merchants to engage with mobile-savvy consumers of those payment methods. We are off to a remarkable start since its official debut last year.” As of today, Alipay+ has integrated with the following payments providers in Asia: Akulaku Paylater (Indonesia) Alipay (Mainland China) AlipayHK (Hong Kong) Boost (Malaysia) The Bank of the Philippine Islands app (The Philippines) Dana (Indonesia) EZ-Linke Wallet (Singapore) HelloMoney by Asia United Bank (The Philippines) GCash (The Philippines) Kakao Pay (South Korea) Rabbit Line Pay (Thailand) TrueMoney Wallet (Thailand) Touch ‘n Go eWallet (Malaysia) Although Ant has been exploring overseas growth for years, the task gained renewed urgency as Beijing told it to overhaul all facets of its business in China. Following the revamp, Ant is expected to operate more like a traditional financial holding company and shoulder more capital risks, which will inevitably hurt its profitability.

Don’t panic — this isn’t Tencent’s first tie-up with a state-owned firm • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in alibaba, Beijing, China, Government & Policy, jack ma, TencentNo Comments

News on Tencent and China Unicom is causing a stir in China’s tech industry on Wednesday afternoon. The gaming and social networking behemoth and the state-owned carrier have received regulatory approval to set up a joint venture, according to a government announcement. Following the transaction, Tencent and China Unicom will respectively own 42% and 47% of the firm. The development has led to concerns over even greater government influence on China’s Big Tech. Some netizens go as far as speculating Tencent will eventually be de-privatized. This reaction is expected given China has been tightening its grip on the internet industry over the past three years. Tencent’s gaming business, for instance, took a big hit when Beijing halted the issuance of new gaming permits. But a closer look at the notice suggests this new “mixed ownership” entity seems to have a limited impact on Tencent’s existing business. The entity, according to a filing in September, will center around two areas: content delivery network and edge computing. CDN refers to a geographically distributed network of servers that work together to speed up content distribution for users, whereas edge computing means processing data at the periphery rather than the center of a network. Tencent’s cloud computing arm seems most pertinent to the new JV. The enterprise-facing segment has gained new significance as a revenue driver since China’s regulatory clampdown sent chills across the consumer internet sector. And it’s indeed in the area of web infrastructure where Tencent’s involvement in the public sector has been the most active. Tencent Cloud has a page dedicated to showcasing the sort of public services it empowers. From online government services to community centers with self-serve kiosks, one can find solutions supplied by Tencent — and in fact, Alibaba, Baidu, and other tech giants we well. Beijing has been working to digitize the government apparatus for years, and what better solution providers are there than its own tech darlings? Tencent has been boasting the role of WeChat as a digital infrastructure for government services as early as 2019: The WeChat owner is no stranger to mixed ownership either. In 2017, China Unicom was seeking to raise $11.7 billion from a dozen investors — including Tencent and Alibaba — as part of Beijing’s push to revitalize state-owned enterprises with private capital, a structure dubbed ‘mixed ownership.’ Working with a state-owned entity doesn’t naturally imply a greater presence of the visible hand at Tencent. The goal of an SOE is to earn profits for the government, too. But undeniably, China’s private tech sector has been under growing pressure to align its interest with that of the state through a series of regulatory overhauls, often at the cost of their profitability. Ant Group has gone through a deep restructuring to play more like a traditional financial institution. Tencent has ramped up protection for minors and put more effort into educational games.