- Ant Financial is owned by Alibaba Group.
- Presently, Alibaba has more blockchain patents applications than any company in the financial industry.
Ant Financial, which is an online payment firm that is owned by Alibaba Group and was previously known as Alipay, recently stated an intention to apply for a digital banking license in Singapore, according to reports from 8BTC. With this license, the payment firm would establish itself as a digital bank in Southeast Asia with quite a bit of pull.
Ant Financial’s SME Services recently was approved by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to operate a virtual bank in the country on May 9th of this year. Upon this approval, Ant Financial had expressed that they would be working to promote fintech development, as well as inclusive finance, aiming to offer the consumers of Hong Kong more opportunities for small and micro-enterprises.
There could still be some competition for Ant Financial in the future, considering that local banks in Singapore have also shown interest in obtaining virtual banking licenses. Still, it is worth noting that the fiscal report from Alibaba shows that the company ranks first in blockchain patent applications around the world. Their blockchain is capable of supporting 1 billion accounts and 1 billion transactions on a daily basis, processing thousands in cross-chain information each second.
