This week, representatives of hundreds of financial and technology companies – from start-ups to industry giants – gathered at the Money 20/20 conference in Amsterdam (Netherlands). But even at the European conference, attention was focused on China, CNBC reports.
One of the key topics at the conference was China’s leading role in the fintech industry.
The audit company EY, which examined the introduction of financial technology in 20 major economies, has named China the leader in this indicator.
The study found that 69% of Chinese consumers have used at least two fintech services in the past six months.
In second place is India, where 52% of consumers use fintech, in third place is the UK (42%).
Most often in China they use the services of mobile payments and transfers. 83% of consumers in the country make payments or money transfers using smartphones.
58% of Chinese consumers report using fintech platforms for savings and investment. 46% use fintech to borrow money.
“Alibaba and Ant Financial – we are literally the largest financial and technological company in the world, and we are the largest company in the world in the field of electronic commerce, and these two huge machines are still growing in annual terms by more than 50% per year,” Li Wang, the head of Alipay in the EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East, Africa), said at the Money 20/20 conference.
According to Li, Alipay, a platform for mobile and online payments, has 870 million active users, including 600 million in China and 270 million in other countries.
According to Vesti.Ekonomika, Ant Financial Services Group – the subsidiary of Alibaba, the largest Chinese platform for online payments – managed to attract $ 14 billion from a group of investors. The company was valued at approximately $ 150 billion, making it China’s most expensive private technology company. In the summer of 2016, Ant Financial was valued at $ 60 billion.
The round of financing was attended by both Chinese and foreign investors, including government investment funds in Singapore and Malaysia, the Investment Council of the Canadian Pension Plan (Canada Pension Plan Investment Board), private equity funds Silver Lake, General Atlantic and others.
“The funds raised will be used to accelerate Alipay’s globalization plans and invest in technology,” Ant Financial said.
The company noted that it will continue to invest in areas such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, security, the Internet of things and computing capabilities to improve its global technology platform.
