Alibaba affiliate, Ant Financial Services Group, which operates Alipay online payments system, will also provide another CNY 1 billion fund in low-interest loans to the entrepreneurs, scmp.com reports. The two initiatives are part of the Shengyi 1.0 programme.
This programme also includes staging a series of training workshops for developers several times a year. The company hoped the development programme would foster the wider use of its technologies, such as online payment and location-based services, in a new generation of mobile apps.
As the world’s biggest market for smartphones and having the fastest rollout of 4G mobile networks, mainland China has seen its consumers rapidly adopt apps for a host of local services like booking taxis, ordering take-out lunches and buying movie tickets. Shengyi 1.0 would encourage apps developers to extend those local services to include, for example, adding a consumer-credit component. Ant Financial recently launched a credit-scoring system called Sesame Credit.
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