Alipay mobile payment service might be BIGGER than of many global banks...
#Ant Group Set to Raise $34 Billion in World’s Biggest I.P.O. (Published 2020)
3-4 minutes - Technology|
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/technology/ant-group-ipo-valuation.html
The #Alibaba online #finance spinoff, which offers people in #China a one-stop shop for #loans, #investments and more, will list shares in Hong Kong and #Shanghai.
Using Alipay at a market in #Hangzhou, China. The more people use Alipay, the more data it gathers about their spending #power.
Credit...Alex Plavevski/EPA, via Shutterstock
Raymond Zhong
Published Oct. 26, 2020
Updated Nov. 6, 2020
Ant Group, the #Chinese #financial technology titan, is set to raise around $34 billion when its #shares begin #trading in Hong Kong and Shanghai in the coming weeks, which would make its initial public offering the largest on record.
The company, the parent of the #Alipay #mobile #payment #service, priced its shares around $10.30 apiece, according to documents released on Monday by #stockexchanges in the two cities. At that price, the company would be worth around $310 billion, a market value comparable to that of #JPMorganChase and more than that of many other global #banks.
The money Ant raises would surpass the $29.4 billion that Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil company, #SaudiAramco, raised when it went public last year. Ant’s listing would also be larger than that of its sister company, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which raised $25 billion when its shares started trading on the #NewYork Stock Exchange in 2014.
For hundreds of millions of people in China, Alipay may as well be a #bank. It is their #credit card,# debit card, #mutual fund and even insurance broker — all on a single mobile platform. It is a lender to small businesses, both online and off, that might otherwise be ignored by China’s big state-run #banks. Alipay has more than 730 million monthly #users, more than twice the population of the #UnitedStates / #US. By comparison, #PayPal has 346 million active accounts.
Like other giant internet companies, Ant says its strength lies in performing a large number of different tasks at once. The more people use Alipay to purchase lattes, for example, the more data it gathers about their spending power. Ant says this information helps it offer loans, investments and insurance policies that suit users’ needs. The data also helps Ant and its partner banks determine who is likely to pay them back.
