Red envelope gifting is a Chinese New Year tradition that has become digitized as a result of advanced payment processing; the January 27 weekend marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year and the country is expected to transact over 100 billion digital envelopes, an increase from 32 billion in 2015 which reported a 1,000% increase from the prior year; payment processors integrated with social media have increasingly been gaining market share and supporting digital transaction growth; bitcoin transactions are also expected to increase for the Chinese New Year. Source
Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial has announced the acquisition of US payments company MoneyGram; Ant Financial plans to leverage and integrate MoneyGram's payments network to provide enhanced servicing for its digital clients; the acquisition represents a significant expansion of services both globally and into the US for Ant Financial; MoneyGram offers global money transfer services from over 350,000 global locations with over 40,000 payment processing locations in the Unites States; with MoneyGram Ant Financial will now have a broader payments network which currently includes its affiliate Alipay, a partnership with Paytm in India and a partnership with Ascend Money in Thailand; the acquisition also helps to support Ant Financial's mission to bring inclusive financial services to users globally. Source
Koubei was founded in 2015 with investment from Alibaba and Ant Financial; the firm offers online e-commerce services for merchants and is part of a diversified group of Alibaba affiliates; in January the firm reported new capital of $1.1 billion from external investors; investors now supporting the firm include Silver Lake, CDH Investments, Yunfeng Capital and Primavera Capital. Source
<p>China has accounted for over 90% of bitcoin's trading volume in recent weeks as no trading costs and a devaluing yuan have attracted the attention of traders; the country has approximately 10 of the world's leading bitcoin exchanges which have seen some intervention from Chinese regulators in recent weeks; beginning on Tuesday, three of the largest Chinese bitcoin exchanges implemented a flat fee of 0.2% per transaction to manage manipulation and volatility; trading volumes were significantly impacted following the new fee structure with volumes down approximately 90% on Chinese bitcoin exchanges.
A study by Citigroup shows China as the world's investment leader in fintech; says investment is being led by success from "Chinese dragons" including Ant Financial, Lu.com, JD Finance and Qufenqi; in the first nine months of 2016 fintech venture capital investment increased to 46% of the global total; the full Citi report can be found here. Source
Aviva, Hillhouse Capital and Tencent have announced plans for a new digital insurer, Aviva Hong Kong; Aviva and Hillhouse will own 40% with Tencent owning the remaining 20%; the new platform will focus on selling digital life insurance in Hong Kong and will also offer additional investment products. Source
Ppdai is reportedly looking to a US IPO and plans to raise $200 million; it would be the second lender to do so after Yirendai in 2015 who raised $75 million; the company was founded in 2007 and offers unsecured loans. Source
Ning Tang, founder of CreditEase speaks about 2016 headwinds faced by Yirendai, the company's P2P lending arm; in August, 2016 the stock declined after new rules were put in place by Chinese authorities on P2P lenders; according to Ning Tang, "We need to do more in terms of investor education and communication as most of the international investors do not have a clear understanding of China's credit market and financial innovation."; 2016 transaction volume was 20 billion yuan ($2.92 billion) in 2016; Tang eyes 100 billion yuan ($14.59 billion) by 2020; looking forward, the company plans to form closer relationships with traditional banks to reach offline customers. Source
Credit China Fintech is forming a consortium to acquire a 36.58% equity interest in Ping An Securities Group (Holdings) Limited; upon completion the consortium intends to make a cash offer for all of the issued shares of Ping An Securities; Credit China Fintech's CEO Phang Yew Kiat says, "Ping An Securities' product offerings are valuable resources that we believe will generate significant synergies with our existing businesses." Source
In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ant Financial's CEO Eric Jing talked about his plans for growth in payments and blockchain; firm is targeting two billion users by 2027; says it will more deeply integrate blockchain and artificial intelligence. Source