At least that’s one way to look at Ant Financial. Headed by Alibaba co-founder Lucy Peng, the division— which was spun off into its own company in 2011 — began as an outgrowth of Alipay, the company’s version of PayPal.

Since then it has expanded into a full-scale financial services firm.

Alibaba’s finance arm Ant Financial released a bunch of interesting data on Alipay, Alibaba’s online payment platform, throughout 2015.

The biggest headline; a full 65 per cent of the money exchanged on Alipay in 2015 was sent via mobile. The developed eastern cities couldn’t be outdone on one metric though; total spending.

The award for that went to Shanghai’s Alipay users, who spent a whopping 104,155 yuan (US$15,839) per capita. Ordering delivery from O2O food providers also became a major trend this year.

Tencent’s WeChat has already positioned itself to offer peer-to-peer payments on its services with things such as red envelope, a way for WeChat users to send money.

Widespread adoption of WeChat Payments was not instantaneous but rather the product of a long and precise marketing campaign.

WeChat is also very active in encouraging other retailers, including traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, to launch simple e-commerce store-fronts that use WeChat payments. The tools that the company provides makes it such that any store can become an internet business and gives WeChat control of payment technologies from the get-go.

This has made Tencent a true force to be reckoned with in the Chinese ecosystem, giving the internet giant the power to offer partner companies immediate exposure to the hundreds of millions of users that use the WeChat wallet.

China’s P2P lending marketplace is a flurry of competition, with numerous players having raised major rounds over the past year. P2P lending in China probably isn’t a zero sum game — it may be that several of these companies can rise to the top together — but there’s no way everyone’s going to win.

For example, Yirendai, listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the tag YRD, raised US$75 million.

Just as the company listed, it demonstrated that it passed muster with stringent US Securities and Exchange Commission regulations. Its largest competitor Ezubao has become embroiled in a scandal at home.

To meet this explosion in the P2P lending scene, China increased control of online finance with the intention of looking to develop healthier and sustainable industry growth especially keeping in mind the recent equities plunge that China has faced.

Lufax, a Chinese peer-to-peer lender and broker, has secured its position as the world’s most valuable financial technology startup by completing a fundraising which values the company at US$18.5 billion.

The money will be used to support Lufax’s existing peer-to-peer lending operations, and to diversify into new areas such as wealth management. It also wants to look into cross-border activities and improve its ability to package loans.

The company was valued at US$10 billion in March 2015, when it raised $500 million through a private placement. Lufax’s initial public offering could come as early as this year, though the company is still considering whether to list domestically or overseas.

Right now, online lending is one of the most exciting growth sectors in China; unfortunately it’s also a bit unruly. There are currently more than 2, 500 platforms with over US$60 billion in loans outstanding, up four-fold since 2014. However, this lawlessness has led to a Wild West of sorts with masses of P2P lenders collapsing. To combat this, the central bank did reveal plans for stricter regulations but only time will tell if it is effective.

China is getting into online scoring in a big way with its proposed behaviour monitoring system which will take into account citizen activity on social media and e-commerce to create a score that is then pegged to that citizen. The full scope of this plan encompasses a wide variety of internet behaviour as well as workplace performance. Much like in personal credit rating, these ‘social credit’ systems could be used to determine jobs, housing and other social services.

In that vein, since January 2015 Alibaba Group’s Ant Financial Services has announced a new credit-scoring system that uses information from various Alibaba services like Taobao to gauge someone’s credit-worthiness.

This new service called Sesame Credit shows just how far Alibaba has managed to sink its tendrils into China internet ecosystem. When launched, the system will look at the over 300 million registered users on Alibaba platforms like Tmall and Taobao, in conjunction with their payment history from Alipay and other financial services to create a credit score.

What next?

Chinese companies will start to look beyond their current successes and they will probably do this by looking outside China as opposed to looking within.

A smart way to do this is to leverage venture capital (VC) funds based outside of China. There are three broad reasons for this.

VCs, especially VCs that specialise in fintech, are already aware of the latest trends in the market. Often large conglomerates with many moving parts lack the focus to discern these trends and instead spend resources on copying yesterday’s practises.

Secondly, it’s a question of having the right kind of talent. For Chinese companies looking to make a splash on the global stage, time is of the essence but the sad truth is that building anything great takes time. By leveraging on VCs, such companies will get ready access to specialist teams that have already been built, allowing for quick deployment.

Thirdly, VCs already have the knowledge and more importantly, access to new markets. This along with experience with various fintech products and methodologies makes VCs an indispensable tool that the likes of Alibaba and Tencent should not ignore.

Potentially interesting areas of Chinese fintech-investments across the world will probably be in sectors like mPOS-acquiring (like Square, SumUp, SoftPay); tablet-based cash-registers and POS-management systems (like Poynt, Revel, Square Stand, Mobikon); neobanks (like Simple, Moven, Fidor, Atom, Tandem); online-remittances (like Venmo, WorldRemit, Transferwise, Azimo); blockchain (Digital Asset Holdings, Circle, Coinbase, Ripple, BitFury, CR3, Everledger); Insurtech (Zenefits, Lemonade); and Bank-as-service (Bancorp, BBVA, Chase, Goldman Sachs, Fidor).

Access to fintech services for unbanked people will influence their quality of life resulting in their financial inclusion. It is a necessary step China will have to take as it takes on an increasingly vital role in global finance.

Serguei Netessine is professor of technology and operations management and the Timken Chaired Professor of Global Technology and Innovation at INSEAD. Vladislav Solodkiy is chief executive and managing partner of Life.SREDA.