Alibaba has been offering new financial services around Alipay, including a money market fund for consumers, a mobile payment application and even a new private bank that was approved by the Chinese government in September 2014.
The rebranding of the Alipay unit, whose legal name is Zhejiang Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group Co, is part of a strategy by Alibaba and its affiliated companies to accelerate development of financial business. The name Ant was chosen to symbolize the potential strength of a number of smaller brands working together.
In recent news, Alipay has revealed plans to launch a service for US retailers, dubbed ePass.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now
We welcome comments that add value to the discussion. We attempt to block comments that use offensive language or appear to be spam, and our editors frequently review the comments to ensure they are appropriate. If you see a comment that you believe is inappropriate to the discussion, you can bring it to our attention by using the report abuse links. As the comments are written and submitted by visitors of the The Paypers website, they in no way represent the opinion of The Paypers.