One of the most valuable financial companies in the world offers payment and banking solutions, provides loans and enables wealth management to its customers. But this company is not a traditional bank. Chinese provider Ant Financial has built an impressive platform in just a few years. Last year, Jack Ma's FinTech already boasted 1.3 billion monthly active users worldwide, bringing its valuation to more than $200 billion before its canceled IPO. Originally launched as a pure payment provider under the name Alipay, the subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba has managed to expand its business model to include a variety of services to create a complex ecosystem. The world's largest money market fund, Yu'e Bao, is part of Ant Financial, as is credit rating system Sesame Credit and UK-based financial services provider WorldFirst. Ant Financial is always data-driven and successfully covers the alphabet of the Internet: from A for Artificial Intelligence to B for Blockchain and C for Cloud Computing.
In short: Ant Financial is not a classic bank. But the fintech from the Far East is already doing much of what established financial institutions could model for the future: With the intelligent use of data, they can build complex platforms – and thus formulate an answer to the industry's biggest challenges – be it the changing behavior of customers, the new data-driven competition of the fintech scene or the consequences of the persistent low-interest environment.


