alipay News of 01/16/21

Ant Group Could Raise As Much As $34.5b In IPO In What Would Be World’S Largest IPO

The long-anticipated IPO of Alibaba-affiliated Chinese fintech giant Ant Group could raise tens of billions of dollars in a dual-listing on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges. Shares for the company formerly known as Ant Financial are ...

The OpenStack Foundation Becomes The Open Infrastructure Foundation

The OpenStack Foundation becomes the Open Infrastructure Foundation image This has been a long time coming, but the OpenStack foundation today announced that it is changing its name to ‘Open Infrastructure Foundation,” starting in 2021. The announcement, which the foundation made at its virtual developer ...

‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ And The Limits Of Today’S Game Economies

Kaiser Hwang Contributor Share on Twitter Kaiser Hwang is a longtime member of the games community and a vice president at Forte , an organization building an open economic platform for games. ...

Google And Walmart’S PhonePe Establish Dominance In India’S Mobile Payments Market As WhatsApp Pay Struggles To Launch

Google and Walmart’s PhonePe establish dominance in India’s mobile payments market as WhatsApp Pay struggles to launch image In India, it’s Google and Walmart-owned PhonePe that are racing neck-and-neck to be the top player in the mobile payments market, while Facebook remains mired in a regulatory maze for WhatsApp Pay’s rollout. In May, more than 75 ...

Visa’S Africa Strategy Banks On Startup Partnerships

Visa’s Africa strategy banks on startup partnerships image Visa has prioritized growth in Africa, and partnering with startups is central to its strategy. This became obvious in 2019 after the global financial services giant entered a series of collaborations on the continent, but Visa confirmed it in ...

Alipay Owner Ant Financial Takes Minority Stake In Klarna

Some big moves in the payments platform space: Ant Financial Group, the owner of China’s Alipay payment platform, has announced it’s taking a minority stake in Swedish payments platform Klarna . Klarna has a strong European ...

Nigeria’S Paga Acquires Apposit, Confirms Mexico And Ethiopia Expansion

Nigeria’s Paga acquires Apposit, confirms Mexico and Ethiopia expansion image Nigerian digital payments startup  Paga has acquired Apposit , a software development company based in Ethiopia, for an undisclosed amount. That’s just part of Paga’s news. The Lagos based startup will also launch its payment ...

African Fintech Firm Flutterwave Raises $35m, Partners With Worldpay

African fintech firm Flutterwave raises $35M, partners with Worldpay image San Francisco and Lagos-based fintech startup  Flutterwave has raised a $35 million Series B round and announced a partnership with Worldpay FIS for payments in Africa. With the funding, Flutterwave will invest in technology and business ...

Jumia, DHL, And Alibaba Will Face Off In African Ecommerce 2.0

Jumia, DHL, and Alibaba will face off in African ecommerce 2.0 image The business of selling consumer goods and services online is a relatively young endeavor across Africa, but ecommerce is set to boom. Over the last eight years, the sector has seen its first phase of big VC fundings, startup duels and attrition. ...

2019 Africa Roundup: Jumia IPOs, China Goes Digital, Nigeria Becomes Fintech Capital

2019 Africa Roundup: Jumia IPOs, China goes digital, Nigeria becomes fintech capital image 2019 brought more global attention to Africa’s tech scene than perhaps any previous year. A high profile IPO, visits by both Jacks (Ma and Dorsey), and big Chinese startup investment energized that. The last 12 months served as a grande ...

Who Will The Winners Be In The Future Of Fintech?

Nik Milanovic Contributor Share on Twitter Nik Milanovic is a fintech and financial inclusion enthusiast, with a decade of work across mobile payments, online lending, credit and microfinance. ...

China Roundup: Facial Recognition Lawsuit And Cashless Payments For Foreigners

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. This week, a lawsuit sparked a debate over the deployment of China’s ...

China’S Growing Digital Influence In Africa

There’s been a heap of China in Africa coverage over the last decade, but very little of it is focused on tech. In part, because the country’s engagement with African startups is light compared to its deal-making on infrastructure and commodities. ...

The Emergence Of Super Apps In Latin America

Thiago Paiva Contributor Share on Twitter Thiago Paiva is a fintech entrepreneur, writer and investor. He is the co-founder of Liquia Digital Assets , an investment platform for international ...

How Zhihu’S Become One Of China’S Biggest Hubs For Experts

Zhihu may not be as well known outside of China as WeChat or ByteDance’s Douyin, but over the past eight years, it has cultivated a reputation for being one of the country’s most trustworthy social media platforms. Originally launched as a ...

WeChat Pay And Alipay Partner QFPay Raises $20 Million To Develop New Digital Payment Solutions

Digital payments startup QFPay announced today that it has raised $20 million in new funding led by returning investors Sequoia Capital China and Matrix Partners. MDI Ventures, the investment arm of state-owned Indonesian telecom Telkom Indonesia, ...

Africa Roundup: Canal+ Acquires ROK, Flutterwave And Alipay Partner, OPay Raises $50m

Africa Roundup: Canal+ acquires ROK, Flutterwave and Alipay partner, OPay raises $50M image in July, French television company Canal+  acquired the ROK film studio from VOD company IROKOtv. Canal+ would not disclose the acquisition price, but confirmed there was a cash component of the deal. Founded by  Jason Njoku   in 2010 — and ...

Flutterwave And Alipay Partner On Payments Between Africa And China

Flutterwave and Alipay partner on payments between Africa and China image San Francisco and Lagos based fintech startup Flutterwave has partnered with Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba to offer digital payments between Alipay and African merchants. Flutterwave is a Nigerian founded B2B payments service ...

Hellobike, Survivor Of China’S Bike-Sharing Craze, Goes Electric

Hellobike, survivor of China’s bike-sharing craze, goes electric image Just two years ago, investors were heavily pouring money into China’s dockless bike-sharing startups. Now that boom has busted with derelict bikes littering the streets of cities. Meanwhile, a new race has started for two-wheelers with motors ...

Meituan, Alibaba, And The New Landscape Of Ride-Hailing In China

Instead of switching between apps to secure a ride during rush hour, people in China can now hail from different companies using a single app. Some of the country’s largest internet companies — including ride-hailing giant Didi itself — are ...