China Internet Stats, Trends, Insights
Ant Group is the largest FinTech company in China. Ant Group’s main products include Alipay, Yu’e Bao, Huabei, Xiang Hu Bao, MYBank, Zhima Credit.
Get the 674-page report here (CIW Premium subscribers) based on its 2020 IPO data.
Officially set up in June 2014 and previously called Ant Financial, Ant Group aims to create the infrastructure and platform to support the digital transformation of the service industry.
Ant Group makes $2.5 billion in profit in 2019, and its revenue grew more than 40% in 2019 to $17.4 billion, according to the company’s IPO filing in August 2020. It reported $3.2 billion profit for the first half of 2020.
Ant Group’s main products include Alipay, Yu’e Bao, Huabei, Xiang Hu Bao, MYBank, Zhima Credit.
Alipay is China’s largest mobile payments business operated by Ant Group. In 2004, Alipay launched as an escrow service to address the issue of trust between online buyers and sellers in the early days of e-commerce in China.
Alipay has grown through continuous innovation to serve approximately 1.3 billion users worldwide together with its global e-wallet partners.
Yu’e Bao is an online spare cash management platform launched by Ant Group in the Alipay app.
When someone transfers money to Yu’e Bao, it will be put into a money market fund managed by a partner asset management company, generating returns for the user. The platform’s over 600 million users can also access the funds in their Yu’E Bao accounts to make online and offline purchases anytime.
Huabei is a consumer credit platform that supports consumers to “buy now and pay later”. Users can enjoy up to 41 days of delayed re-payment free of charge and 12-month installment services.
As an inclusive financial service that offers loans in small amounts to individual users, Huabei is mainly used for consumption in daily life. The platform primarily leverages the capital from financial institutions and other institutional investors.
Xiang Hu Bao, which means “mutual protection”, is an online mutual aid platform within the Alipay app. It provides a basic health plan to protect participants against 100 kinds of critical illnesses. All participants share the risk of critical illnesses and bear the related expenses collectively, while blockchain technology is used to ensure claims are transparent.
While Xiang Hu Bao is not a health insurance product, it complements other premium insurance offerings in the market that have a wider range and depth of coverage.
MYbank is one of the first private banks piloted in China and the first digital bank with no physical branches.
MYbank is committed to serving small and micro-businesses. It developed the “310 lending model”, which enables borrowers to complete loan applications online in three minutes, obtain approval in one second, and with zero human intervention. Since its inception in 2015, the bank has served over 29 million small and micro businesses, as well as individual entrepreneurs.
Zhima Credit, or Sesame Credit, is a private and independent credit assessment service built for commercial use. Users with a higher Zhima Credit score can enjoy benefits such as deposit waivers when renting a bike or staying at a hotel.
Currently, Zhima Credit has been able to help users waive more than RMB 100 billion of required deposits.
