Koubei was founded in 2015 with investment from Alibaba and Ant Financial; the firm offers online e-commerce services for merchants and is part of a diversified group of Alibaba affiliates; in January the firm reported new capital of $1.1 billion from external investors; investors now supporting the firm include Silver Lake, CDH Investments, Yunfeng Capital and Primavera Capital. Source
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 Cloud, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, has announced it will be expanding its cloud business by opening four new data centers; the new data centers will be opened in the Middle East (Dubai), Europe, Australia and Japan by the end of 2016; the new data centers will expand Alibaba Cloud's data center network to 14 locations; Alibaba Cloud's services include platform development, data management, data storage, data analytics and cloud security. Source
China’s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba, launched a new interest free offering for U.S. small businesses;“Rather than a low-cost loan, the...
Alibaba will bring a version of its smartphone-based payment platform to Japan as early as 2018 spring; the Japanese unit of Ant Financial will offer a version of the Alipay digital payment system tailored for the Japanese market under a new brand. Source
Fintech is expected to generate $65 billion in sales by 2020 and Alibaba and Tencent are projected to capture half of the market; this would significantly increase valuations for both large e-commerce firms; online payments growth is also projected to be significant, supporting further value increases for both firms. Source
Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and Tencent are leading e-commerce market growth, seeking to do everything from cloud computing to digital payments; the Chinese market infrastructure is also helping their business growth and their business models are rivaling comparative US companies; Jack Ma's Alibaba is expanding rapidly in the global markets with partnerships and acquisitions and Tencent is following closely with numerous acquisitions as well; investment bank Goldman Sachs estimates China's online retail market to double in size by 2020 to $1.7 trillion and aggressive market expansion from Alibaba and Tencent appears to be successfully supporting that estimate. Source
Alibaba has reportedly increased its bid for payments company MoneyGram; Alibaba initially announced the acquisition in January which will broaden its payments network; new terms of the deal increase the offer price to $18 per share from $13.25 and have been approved by the board of directors; the increased deal value follows a competing bid from Euronet Worldwide. 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.
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