Affiliated to the Chinese Alibaba Group and controlled by Jack Ma, Ant Group, the fintech giant formerly known as Alipay, has finally embarked on the journey that has been anticipated by the market for years.
Ant Financial, the world’s highest-valued fintech organization, also known as a huge financial services and payments company, on July 20, 2020, broke the news of getting started with the process of a concurrent IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Nasdaq-style Star Market.
The positive side of Ant selecting the HKSE and Star Market is closely associated with the latest trend of Chinese tech firms choosing trading options that are closer to home, as the cities ease the high-risk and innovation-driven firms to access funding.
Ant’s public listing plan is aimed toward a plethora of goals to digitize China’s service industry and onboard mom and pop stores in the country to use its payments service and increase domestic demands. It could also serve as a channel of government-issued coupons for customers during the coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, the company looks forward to global expansions and plans to tap nine countries and invest in newer technologies.
On the new beginning, Eric Jing, Executive Chairman of Ant Group, stated, “The two markets have opened the doors for global investors to access leading-edge technology companies from the most dynamic economies in the world and for those companies to have greater access to the capital markets. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to play a part in this development.”
More about Ant Group
Bankers value Ant at an astounding USD 200 billion as per sources from Reuters. However, the company chose not to comment on its valuation.
Formerly known as “Ant Financial,” the financial giant recently reworked on its brand name and is now known as Ant Group to concentrate on scaling back its focus on in-house financial products.
As per a recent update from Alibaba, the entity that owns 33% in Ant, shed light on the 2019 revenues generated by the company, out of which half were earned from the technological infrastructure provided to enterprise clients rather than proprietary financial products.
About Alipay
Alipay, with 1.3 billion users across the globe over a period, has advanced from a basic payment app into an online gateway to third-party financial products, such as micro-loans and insurance.
