Zennon Kapron from China Fintech & Kapron Asia joined us in a conversation to discuss the Ant Financial, one of China’s largest finance companies. We discussed their vision, mission, leadership & financial services after their spinoff from Alibaba Group. We dissect their global expansion strategy particularly with their recent attempt to acquire Moneygram and investments into local payment networks. Last but not least, we discuss their competition and how they will move forward in 2017. 

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Zennon Kapron (@chinafintech, LinkedIn, Wechat:zennon ), Founder and Director of Kapron Asia & China Fintech [0:37]

Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [0:58]
What are the most interesting trends you have seen in fintech in the first quarter? [1:45]

Ant Financial [3:25]

Introduction to Ant-Financial – The company officially founded in October 2014 and originated from Alipay which is the world’s leading third-party payment platform founded in 2004. With its vision of “bringing small and beautiful changes to the world,” Ant Financial is dedicated to creating an open ecosystem, enabling financial institutions and partners to make rapid progress towards “Internet+” goals through its “Internet Booster Plan,” and providing inclusive financial services to small and micro enterprises and individual consumers. Note that Ant-Financial is not part of the Alibaba Group which has IPO in NYSE under BABA with a market cap of 271.14B
Can you talk about the mission and vision of Ant Financial? [4:25] 
Are they focused on digital payments or more into financial inclusion? [6:10]
The parallel between E-bay spinning off Paypal similar to Alibaba Group spinning off Alipay into Ant Financial. [7:58]
How is their coverage in China and how they are compared to Tenpay? Based on Matthew Brennan from China Channel, Tenpay has 30.1% market share and Alipay is now 50+% in China. [9:10]
What are the key products and services of Ant Financial? [12:10]

Alipay [12:23]
Sesame Credit [13:47]
MyBank [16:37]
* Yuerbao [18:40] 

Who are the key people in the executive leadership team in Ant Financial? [20:10]
Ant Financial has made a few major investments and acquisitions across the world:

MoneyGram: They offered US$800M to buy the remittance service, and now Euronet is upping the bid to US$1B. What are your thoughts on that? Note: by the time when the podcast is published, Ant Financial has now upped the bid to US$1.2B to acquire Moneygram. [21:30]
Paytm in India: They have invested a total of US$680M in Paytm in India with a stake of 40% and also Jack Ma sits on the board, is that going to be their entry strategy elsewhere? [24:00] 
Hypothetically, should Alipay acquire Paypal when E-Bay spun the latter into a public listing? [25:26]

Moving forward, who will be the major competitors to Ant-Financial? [26:36]
How do you see their strategy moving forward? [27:38]