Alibaba rebrands Ant Financial; now dominating world banking?

Written by || October 20 2014

Last week, Alibaba’s finance arm rebranded their “Small and Medium Financial Services Company today to “Ant Financial Services Group” or “Ant Financial”.

As Ant Financial Services Group is rebranded the group will contain:

  • Alipay – online payments platform including the Alipay Wallet,
  • Yu’eBao – Alipay’s money market fund
  • Zhao Cai Bao – A platform for financial products and services (including 3rd parties)
  • Ant Credit – micro online loans
  • MYbank – the new private bank to be launched by Alibaba with Shanghai Fosun Industrial Technology

Ant Financial is technically an entirely separate company to Alibaba although the products and services are complimentary and the Alibaba parent is entitled to a certain percentage of proceeds should Ant go public – which it likely will.

What this represents is one of the clearest examples of the ‘complete’ package in online and financial services globally. Say what you will about Alibaba’s purchasing strategy and critsize the VIE structure with which it used to list in the US, but the company has done an amazing job of piecing together what will be a massive step forward in financial services, not just in China, but globally.