A Financial Technology IPO That Is Much Anticipated
Ant Financial, powered by Alipay, is expanding significantly and that is making investors look forward to a potential IPO.
Sometimes, stock trading and investing are all about waiting for a golden opportunity to pop up. It could be an IPO of a business that has significant potential.
One of the companies whose IPO is hugely anticipated is actually a spin-off from the largest ever IPO, Alibaba ($BABA). It is the Ant Financial Services Group tech company which has a $75 billion business value and has occupied the top spot among the leading worldwide fin-tech companies in 2016.
Ant Financial has a shareholding pattern with 76.4% held under Alibaba’s partnership with employees, management and cross grants to the Group, and 23.6% held by Chinese domestic investors. During an IPO, the Alibaba Group has the right to an equity stake of 33% based on regulatory approval.
Alipay Raises Ant Financial Profile for IPO
Powering Ant Financial is Alipay, the third-party payment platform, which has more than 450 million active users. Alipay occupies 55% of China’s third-party mobile payments market. But Ant is working on various strategies to enable Alipay to have at least a million merchants outside mainland China in three years.
By the end of 2016, Alipay was globally supported in 70 regions and countries while working with more than 200 payment solution providers and financial institutions. It currently supports 18 currencies.
Expanding to International Transactions and Businesses
First Data Corporation ($FDC) will soon implement Alipay at point-of-sale. This will cover American businesses. This partnership with FDC is a further extension of the collaboration it forged in 2016 that made Alipay mobile payment solutions accepted at certain specialty and luxury retail locations all through New York and California. There is also the collaboration with Verifone that has more than 29 million payment terminals and devices globally. This tie-up enables North American and European retailers to accept Alipay through a Verifone device.
These international alliances are what Alipay is banking on to keep growing. Crucially, it wants to benefit from the millions spent by Chinese tourists on purchases during their overseas visits. These visits are expected to touch 150 million by 2020, according to stats by the China National Tourism Administration. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Chinese tourists spent $261 billion in 2016 in their outbound travels which was a 12% increase from 2015.
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