China’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has restructured its agreement with Alipay inorder to maximise its potential gain ahead of an expected IPO later this year.
Alibaba has also sold its SME loans business to Alipay’s parent company, Small and Micro Financial Services, for $518 million.
Alipay was previously part of Alibaba’s corporate structure but following new payments business licensing regulations from Beijing, it was placed under separate ownership in 2011.
The new agreement also lifts a $6 billion cap, under certain conditions, on funds that Alibaba could receive if Alipay or its parent company go public. The sale means the financial-services assets will be owned by Chinese nationals instead of the global investors that may buy shares in the IPO.
Whitepapers
Related reading
Travel industry must keep up with consumers’ payments demands
Payments providers must keep up with the fast-paced change of consumer demands in the travel sector, according to Kevin White, Mastercard’s director ... read more
Nissan joins in-car payments race
Payments services providers and fintechs have unleashed a flurry of collaborative innovations over the course of the past decade in order to ... read more
Ripple courting banks, paytech and big fintech to beat Swift to emerging markets
Midway into 2019, Ripple is broadening its clientbase in order to boost growth and capture emerging market volumes, according to Marcus Treacher, ... read more
UK SMEs need to embrace technology revolution
Modulr CEO Myles Stevenson and Seamus Smith, executive vice president of worldwide payments and banking for Sage, on why now is the time to embrace digitisation