Funding negotiations are underway for Alibaba-owned Ant Financial Services Group, with a number of state-owned banks believed to be poised to make an offer.
The news magazine Caixin has said that CDB Capital, part of the China Investment Bank, alongside the Postal Savings Bank of China and the country’s government-backed social security fund, are finalising the purchase of a 16 per cent stake in Ant Financial. However, a spokesperson for the company, which runs the online payment platform Alipay, has said that they will not comment on rumours or speculation.
In the year leading up to June 2014, Alipay transferred $778 billion in payments and accounted for 78 per cent of all payments on Alibaba’s e-commerce platform. Founder Jack Ma has long hinted at plans to take Ant Financial, which has now been valued at $30million, to IPO as a separate entity.
Whitepapers
Related reading
The latest issue of Payments [R]Evolution magazine is here
The industry-leading magazine is available to download now.
Dimebox CEO Raymundo Leefmans: “Bringing value to merchants is more important than just processing transactions from A to B.”
"Big players and traditional acquirers are struggling to get out of the commodity corner, to the point of providing agile services that allow them to be omni-channel and data-centric. That is what we provide, an opportunity to fulfill those goals."
Currencycloud secures a $25m investment from Google
The funding round totalled $61m, and will used to finance the company's global expansion plans.
Wirex, Paytm are latest digital payments companies to complete funding rounds
Monzo also revealed its latest funding round last week.
