Alibaba’s financial services subsidiary Ant Financial is set to spend US$ 1 Billion in a bid to expand its reach into India and Southeast Asia.
Ant Financial, formerly AliPay, is currently the world’s highest-valued Fintech.
Ant Financial’s Vice President, Ji Gang, said the fintech will channel the funds towards investing in payment and fintech startups across India and Southeast Asia.
The fintech firm has trained its sights on technologies and use cases relating to digital/online payments.
Related article: Alibaba’s Ant Financial buys London-based payments company WorldFirst
Ant Financial will also use artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and computing to ramp up the development speed of small and medium-sized financial institutions such as insurance firms, and small scale banks.
In 2015, Ant Financial bought a 25% equity stake in India-based One97. One97 is the parent company of Indian fintech company, Paytm.
Paytm raised close to US$ 1 Billion in its Series G funding round. Ant Financial and SoftBank Vision Fund each contributed $400 million and $200 million respectively.
