China's bricks-and-mortar state bank looks to Alipay for help to embrace fintech
Alibaba affiliate will help lender with cloud computing, mobile payments and artificial intelligence-driven applications
Ant Financial, an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, said on Wednesday it had signed a strategic cooperation agreement with China Everbright Bank and its financial technology affiliate Everbright Technology, to help the state bank with its digital transformation.
Under the agreement, Ant Financial will share its financial technology capabilities and know-how with China Everbright to help the bank develop cloud computing, internet finance, mobile payment, artificial intelligence-driven applications, smart risk management systems, as well as biometric verification, said the Hangzhou-based company.
“Fintech is becoming core competence for financial institutions in the pursuit of transformation and innovation,” said the Beijing-based lender. The three parties will also establish an innovation lab to incubate new financial technology applications.
Eric Jing, the Ant Financial executive chairman and chief executive, has vowed to maintain an open stance on collaborating with partners in technology, to “deliver value to users”.
Ant Financial’s Alipay and Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay had the lion’s share of China’s 109 trillion yuan (US$17 trillion) mobile payments market in 2017, according to data from Beijing-based consultancy Analysys.
