Maybe good things are on the horizon for Ant Group. Recently, the "Disclosure of Licensing Information on Major Matters Changes of Non-bank Payment Institutions (as of December 2023)" published on the official website of the People's Bank of China shows that the central bank issued the Bank Xu Approval Juezi [2023] No. 189,
As a third-party payment company, Alipay (China) is subject to daily supervision by the central bank. Hang Seng Electronics and Cathay Property & Casualty Insurance need to meet the information disclosure requirements of listed companies and insurance companies respectively.
This adjustment of Alipay stems from the adjustment of the voting rights structure of Ant Group in early 2023. At the beginning of 2023, Ant Group issued an announcement that in order to continue to improve corporate governance and achieve long-term sustainable development, Ant Group plans to adopt a series of adjustment measures at the board of directors and shareholder levels, including introducing more independent directors, adjusting the voting rights structure of major shareholders, and promoting shareholder voting rights to be more transparent and decentralized.
After the adjustment is completed,
In July 2023, the financial management authorities, the People's Bank of China, the State Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission, imposed a fine (including confiscation of illegal gains) of 7.123 billion yuan on Ant Group and its affiliates. At the same time, it was announced that most of the outstanding problems that Ant Group once had have been rectified.
What is even more profound is that half a month ago, the "Regulations on the Supervision and Administration of Non-Bank Payment Institutions" (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations") were just promulgated and will come into effect on May 1, 2024. The general idea behind the Regulations requires non-bank payment institutions to conduct business in compliance with the provisions of laws and administrative regulations, follow the principles of safety, efficiency, integrity and fair competition, aim to provide small-amount, convenient payment services, safeguard national financial security, and must not harm national interests, social public interests and the legitimate rights and interests of others.
At the beginning of 2023, Ant will not be able to be listed on A-shares and Hong Kong stocks in the short term due to equity changes. According to relevant regulations, if a company's actual controller changes, it needs to wait three years to be listed on the A-share main board. The waiting periods for the A-share Science and Technology Innovation Board and Hong Kong stocks are two years and one year respectively.
At present, it seems that
Ant Group’s rectification progress, in addition to adjustments to the management and board of directors, also has an important ending——
Since its IPO was suspended in November 2020, Ant Group has continued to slim down its business, segregating the brands of its credit products Huabei and Jiebei, shutting down Huabei, reducing Yu'ebao business, and cutting off from MYbank.
On December 11, 2023, the original operating company of Ant Huabei "Chongqing Ant Small and Micro Loan Co., Ltd." was renamed as "Chongqing Ant Small and Micro Information Technology Co., Ltd.", and its business scope was removed from "carrying out various loans, bill discounting, and asset transfer businesses nationwide" and added advertising production, Internet sales, hotel management, etc.
Previously, in July 2023, the original operating entity of Jiebei, "Chongqing Ant Shangcheng Small Loan Co., Ltd.", also changed its name and business scope. It was renamed "Chongqing Ant Shangcheng Information Technology Co., Ltd." and its business scope was also removed from "carrying out various loans, bill discounting, and asset transfer businesses nationwide."
The name changes and business scope changes of two small loan companies,
According to Ant Group's rectification plan, it has transferred its Huabei and Jiebei businesses to Ant Consumer Finance to undertake operations. After the rectification is completed, Huabei and Jiebei will become the exclusive consumer credit products of Chongqing Ant Consumer Finance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Ant Consumer Finance").
On June 4, 2021, Ant Consumer Finance officially completed its industrial and commercial registration with a registered capital of RMB 8 billion.
On October 25, 2023, after review and approval by the Chongqing Supervision Bureau of the State Administration of Financial Supervision, it was agreed that Ant Consumer Finance would increase its registered capital from 18.5 billion yuan to 23 billion yuan, and at the same time increase the number of Ant Consumer Finance shareholders to 13.
Where will the future of ants go?
Obviously,
During the three years of rectification, Ant Group has been intending to break away from the "finance" label, including expanding other business income and reducing the proportion of financial business revenue. Jing Xiandong, chairman and CEO of Ant Group, also emphasized: "Ant has always been a technology company, not a financial company."
Ant’s trump card is indeed not limited to finance.
at present,
For example, Alipay’s content and traffic commercialization.
Alipay has 1 billion users and 800 million MAU, second only to WeChat and Douyin. It also has 80 million merchant resources, making it the second largest B2C ecosystem in China after Taobao. With so many resources at hand, it would be a pity to just make a tool APP.
The idea of Alipay's traffic operation is to rely on life accounts, while connecting short videos, live broadcasts and other content ecology, and at the same time connecting the transaction functions of mini programs. This is similar to WeChat's idea of using video accounts as the center.
However, WeChat itself has a huge traffic pool, so it can naturally attract businesses through content.
Drawing on the experience of failed social networking in the past, Alipay started to focus on the merchant side this time. The advantage of Alipay is that there are a large number of merchants, which are closer to money and transactions, and users have a natural sense of trust.
Take live streaming as an example. Selling gold and financial products on Alipay is easier to gain users' trust and purchase than on other platforms. Data shows that from August 4 to August 8, 2023, the cumulative live broadcast sales of the China Gold Alipay flagship store exceeded 8 million yuan.
First attract merchants, create suitable categories, and then gradually tap into traffic.
Alipay recently announced a series of upgrades to its live streaming products: by opening the product investment system for the first time, upgrading the expert selection center "Dai Huo Bao" and simplifying the live streaming entry process, it will further lower the threshold for live streaming for small and medium-sized merchants on the Alipay platform.
In terms of traffic commercialization,
"Chinese Entrepreneur" learned from Alipay insiders that Alipay's content and traffic commercialization have become key internal strategic directions. The goal is not to compete with content platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, but to "enlarge the market and reduce the proportion of financial business revenue." As long as Ant seems to have a richer business ecosystem and revenue channels, it will be considered successful.
In addition, Ant Digital’s business, which has always been low-key, has also developed well during the transformation, such as the large-scale graph database TuGraph
As of the end of 2022, Ant’s number of patents in privacy computing, blockchain and other fields remains the first in the world. Ant has not missed the big model craze that started in 2023. It has released a large financial model based on its self-developed basic large model, and the Ant Bailing language model has also been registered.
It's just that the "cash cow" of the financial business is at the forefront, and the digital industry, which has not yet established a commercialization path, appears to be much more low-key. However, with the blessing of the group’s technological attributes, the future importance of the digital business is self-evident.
On the one hand, it provides the innovative global cross-border mobile payment solution Alipay+, which allows millions of merchants around the world to seamlessly connect with 1 billion Asian consumers through one-point access to multiple digital payments, aiming to support the digital transformation of the entire cross-border payment and wallet merchants;
On the other hand, with WorldFirst as the core, it provides one-stop services of collection, payment, management, exchange and lending to support the digital transformation of small, medium and micro enterprises in cross-border trade. Ant summarizes this strategy as “one account to buy the world” and “one account to sell the world”.
In the past three years, the focus was on regulatory rectification, and Ant Group was not willing to make too many external statements about its overseas business. But if you continue to pay attention to Ant, you will find that its overseas expansion is getting faster and faster, and the international business's share of overall revenue is increasing faster than expected.
Ant insiders once told "Chinese Entrepreneur" that since 2023, Ant's five major businesses have become more independent, and the teams have cut each other off and developed independently.
But in any case, after three years of dormancy, the ants have now learned to walk on multiple legs. In the past, Ant Financial may have been a very important “elephant”, but