With more than 730 million monthly users in China on its Alipay app and a growing role linking lenders and borrowers, Ant Group had appeared unstoppable as it marched towards the world's largest stock market debut this week.
Alipay now handles more transactions yearly than Mastercard and Visa, mostly in China, but Ant's portfolio of services has expanded far beyond the lifestyle and payments app. A robo adviser operated by Ant and Vanguard Group helps investors pick which funds to invest in for a small fee. Ant’s InsureTech business, meanwhile, sells a range of insurance products that cover everything from shipping delays to accidents.Ant has used artificial intelligence and other technologies to facilitate not just payments and loans, but products from insurance to wealth management, making it chiefly a technology vendor for financial institutions.
Before China's central bank and regulators met on Monday with Ma and top Ant executives over draft rules for online micro-lending, some analysts had said Ant hoped to escape the closer scrutiny given to financial firms.Ant benefits from the far richer valuations the market affords to tech firms than to financial institutions.