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Alipay
Alipay () is a third-party mobile and online payment platform, established in Hangzhou, China in February 2004 by Alibaba Group and its founder Jack Ma. In 2015, Alipay moved its headquarters to Pudong, Shanghai, although its parent company Ant Financial remains Hangzhou-based. Alipay overtook PayPal as the world's largest mobile (digital) payment platform in 2013. As of June 2020, Alipay serves over 1.3 billion users and 80 million merchants. According to the statistics of the fourth quarter of 2018, Alipay has a 55.32% share of the third-party payment market in mainland China, and it continues to grow. Along with WeChat, Alipay has been described to be China's super-app with a wide range of functionalities including ridesharing, travel booking and medical appointments. History The service was first launched in 2003, by Taobao. The People's Bank of China, China's central bank, issued licensing regulations in June 2010 for third-party payment providers. It also issued ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ant Financial
Ant Group ( zh, s=蚂蚁集团, p=Mǎyǐ jítuán, t=), formerly known as Ant Financial, is an affiliate company of the Chinese conglomerate Alibaba Group. The group owns the world's largest mobile (digital) payment platform Alipay, which serves over 1.3 billion users and 80 million merchants, with total payment volume (TPV) reaching in June 2020. As of 2024, it is the sixth largest fintech company in the world. In March 2019, ''The Wall Street Journal'' reported that Ant's flagship Tianhong Yu'e Bao money-market fund was the largest in the world, with over 588 million users, or more than a third of China's population, contributing cash to it. In October 2020, Ant Group was set to raise US$34.5 billion in the world's largest IPO at the time, valuing the company at US$313 billion. On the eve of the IPO, China stopped the process from moving forward. It was reported that the Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping personally scuttled the Ant IPO. On 12 April 2021, ''The Wall St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alibaba Group
Alibaba Group Holding Limited, branded as Alibaba (), is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology company specializing in E-commerce in China, e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology. Founded on 28 June 1999 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, the company provides consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) sales services via Chinese and global marketplaces, as well as local consumer, digital media and entertainment, logistics, and cloud computing services. It owns and operates a diverse portfolio of companies around the world in numerous business sectors. On 19 September 2014, Alibaba's American initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange raised US$25 billion, giving the company a market value of US$231 billion and, by far, then the largest IPO in world history. It is one of the top 10 most valuable corporations, and is named the 31st-largest public company in the world on the Forbes Global 2000, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mobile Payments In China
China is one of the world's leaders in the adoption of mobile payments. Widespread adoption of mobile payments in China has facilitated the growth of e-commerce in China and growth in the retail banking sector. Digital payment platforms, alternatively known as e-payments, are the main medium of financial transaction in mainland China. Such e-payments, conducted through third-party platforms, make use of QR codes and personal barcodes. The use of physical currency and typical bank cards are relatively uncommon. The market for these platforms is characterised by a duopoly, with WeChat Pay and Alipay holding more than 90% of China’s market share for such transactions. Several alternative, smaller platforms exist, including the Chinese Central Bank’s (PBOC’s) UnionPay application. Due to the rapid adoption of e-payment platforms in China over the last two decades, both WeChat and Alipay have become so-called super-apps, hosting a range of sub-features. This includes tax ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taobao
Taobao is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it was the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd. Taobao Marketplace facilitates consumer-to-consumer retail by providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online stores that mainly cater to consumers in Chinese-speaking regions (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...) and abroad, which is made payable by online accounts. Its stores usually offer an express delivery service. Sellers are able to post goods for sale either through a fixed price or an auction. Auction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Ma
Ma Yun (; born 10 September 1964), or more commonly referred as Jack Ma, is a Chinese businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder of the Jack Ma Foundation, and co-founder of Alibaba Group and Yunfeng Capital. As of May 2025, Ma's net worth was estimated at 27.2 billion. After taking the '' gaokao'' three times, Ma earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Hangzhou Normal University in 1988 and was assigned as an English and international trade lecturer at Hangzhou Dianzi University. Interested in internet entrepreneurship since the 1980s, he founded his first business, Hangzhou Hope Translation Agency, in 1994. The following year, he created the agency’s website and then resigned from the university to establish Hangzhou Hope Computer Services Co., Ltd., one of China’s earliest internet startups, which operated an online yellow pages service for Chinese companies. In 1996, Ma’s company was acquired by China Telecommunications Corporation. Following an unsa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tianhong Asset Management
Tianhong Asset Management Co., Ltd. () is a Chinese asset management company founded in 2004. From 2014 it was considered the largest asset management company in China until 2021. Its most notable product is the Tianhong Yu’e Bao fund which at one point was the world's largest money market fund. History Tianhong Asset Management was set up on 8 November 2004. In October 2013, the Alibaba Group acquired a 51% stake in the company for 1.18 billion RMB from its original shareholders, Tianjin Trust, Inner Mongolia Junzheng Energy & Chemical Group and Wuhu High-tech Investment. The company would be under the Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba. However, in 2014 there was a dispute between Ant Financial and Inner Mongolia Junzheng Energy & Chemical Group on the treatment of Tianhong's retained profits per the deal agreement. Ant Financial announced it had initiated arbitration action by applying to the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission. In Feb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Super-app
A super-app, also known as an everything-app, is a mobile or web application that can provide multiple services including payment and instant messaging services, effectively becoming an all-encompassing self-contained commerce and communication online platform that embraces many aspects of personal and commercial life. Notable examples of super-apps include Tencent's WeChat in China, Tata Neu in India, and Grab in Southeast Asia. For end users, a super-app is an application that provides a set of core features while also giving access to independently developed miniapps. For app developers, a superapp is an application integrated with the capabilities of platforms and ecosystems that allows third-parties to develop and publish miniapps. History The super-app term was first used to describe WeChat when it combined the instant messaging service with the digital wallet function. Recognition of WeChat as a super-app stems from its combination of messaging, payments, e-commerce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WeChat
WeChat or Weixin in Chinese ( zh, c=微信, p=Wēixìn , l=micro-message) is an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment mobile app, app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. The Chinese version of WeChat, Weixin, has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing. Accounts registered using Chinese phone numbers are managed under the Weixin brand, and their data is stored in mainland China and subject to Weixin's terms of service and privacy policy. Non-Chinese numbers are registered under WeChat, and WeChat users are subject to a more liberal terms of service and better privacy policy, and their data is st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
People's Bank Of China
The People's Bank of China (officially PBC and unofficially PBOC) is the central bank of the People's Republic of China. It is responsible for carrying out monetary policy as determined by the ''PRC People's Bank Law'' and the ''PRC Commercial Bank Law''. The PBC was established in 1948 as the bank serving areas of mainland China under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control and became China's sole central bank after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. From 1969 to 1978, the PBC was demoted to a bureau of the Ministry of Finance. The PBC was extensively reformed during the 1990s, when its provincial and local branches were abolished, instead opening nine regional branches. In 2023, these reforms were reversed as when the regional branches were abolished and the provincial branches restored, and new arrangements essentially ended the PBC's longstanding role in financial supervision. The PBC is the 25th-ranked of 26 ministerial-level departments of the St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Payment Service Provider
A payment service provider (PSP) is a third-party company that allows businesses to accept electronic payments, such as credit card and debit card payments. PSPs act as intermediaries between those who make payments, i.e. consumers, and those who accept them, i.e. retailers. They will often provide merchant services and act as a payment gateway or payment processor for e-commerce and brick and mortar businesses. They may also offer risk management services for card and bank based payments, transaction payment matching, digital wallets, reporting, fund remittance, currency exchange and fraud protection. The PSP will typically provide software to integrate with e-commerce websites or point of sale systems. Operation PSPs establish technical connections with acquiring banks and card networks, enabling merchants to accept different payment methods without the need to partner with a particular bank. They fully manage payment processing and external network relationships, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mobile Payment
Mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer and mobile wallet, is any of various payment processing services operated under financial regulations and performed from or via a mobile device. Instead of paying with cash, cheque, or credit card, a consumer can use a payment app on a mobile device to pay for a wide range of services and digital or hard goods. Although the concept of using non-coin-based currency systems has a long history, it is only in the 21st century that the technology to support such systems has become widely available. Mobile payments began adoption in Japan in the 2000s and later all over the world in different ways. The first patent exclusively defined "Mobile Payment System" was filed in 2000. In a developing country, mobile payment solutions can be deployed as a means of extending services of financial institutions to the community known as the "unbanked" or " underbanked", which is estimated to be as much as 50 percent of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
