Ant Financial Services creeps into US market
Chinese online payments service provider Ant Financial Services has joined forces with US tech giants Verifone and First Data. The deal will make cross-border transactions easier for customers from the increasingly-affluent Chinese market. In 2015, Chinese tourists spent $215 billion abroad - a 53% rise on the previous year, World Travel and Tourism Council figures show. Ant Financial currently processes 170 million transactions each day and was named the top worldwide fintech firm in the 2016 Fintech 100 list.

Ant Financial partners with US payment tech companies Verifone and First Data

The Chinese digital payments giant has grand ambitions to corner every market

Alibaba’s digital payment spinoff Ant Financial Services has partnered up with US-based payment tech giants Verifone and First Data.

The report by TechCrunch stated that the announcement was made at the Money 2020 conference in Las Vegas today.

This new deal will further ease cross-border transactions for Chinese shoppers, many of whom are now travelling overseas to splurge on luxury items due to their growing affluence. According to World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), Chinese tourists spent US$215 billion abroad last year, a 53 per cent jump from 2014.

The service, which operates Alipay, currently processes 170 million transactions daily and registers about 450 million active users. Its platform is available at 80,000 retailers across 70 countries in regions including APAC, Western Europe and the US.

With a war chest as large as its ambitions, observers can expect Ant Financial to seal more deals in the coming months to strengthen its position in the global financial playing field.

For reference, Ant Financial raised a whopping US$4.5 billion in April this year, with a good chunk of it coming from state financial institutions. It is approximately valued at US$60 billion currently, and has plans to go public on the domestic stock exchange (though no date has been firmed up, yet).

It was also recently named as the top fintech company globally in the Fintech100 2016 report jointly published by H2 Ventures and KPMG Fintech.

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Image Credit: Ant Financial

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