Enterprise

Everything you need to know about Alibaba’s finance spinoff

It’ll be the world’s largest IPO

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Photo by David Dvořáček on Unsplash

Chinese financial technology giant Ant Group is all set to raise US$ 34 billion via an IPO (Initial Public Offering). The company’s share will be listed in Hong Kong as well as Shanghai. While IPO’s are a common sight, this one’s going to be a record-breaker. It’ll be the largest IPO on record, ever.

The company’s filing shows it has priced each share for US$ 10.30, giving it a market value of US$ 310 billion. Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, raised almost US$ 30 billion last year. But today, data is considered the new oil and recent technology listings has proven this. Ant’s sister company Alibaba raised US$ 25 billion in 2014 when the company got listed on NYSE.

So, the most important question remains, why is Ant Group so valuable? We’ll take a deep-dive to understand the company’s operations, investments, and strategic advantages that have earned it the high valuation today.

How was the Ant Group formed?

We’ve all heard of Alibaba, the world’s largest e-commerce company. Founded by Jack Ma, it revolutionized shopping in Mainland China forever. At the heart of this change was Alipay, a system designed to bridge the lack of trust between buyers and sellers. Even though it started functioning in 2004 as a complimentary service to Alibaba, executives realized it had much more potential and could be used outside of the e-commerce website’s umbrella.

In 2011, Alibaba spun-off Alipay into a new company that was called Zhejiang Alibaba E-Commerce Company. The name was soon changed to Ant Financial, followed by Ant Group in the coming years.

Today, Alipay has more than 700 million monthly users, and they’re just in China. On the other hand, PayPal has almost 350 million users globally. In fact, Ant Group reported revenue of US$ 17.7 billion in the first nine months of 2020, a whopping 43 percent raise over the same period in 2019.

The Coronavirus pandemic has turbocharged usage as people have turned to digital payments and e-commerce as a way of maintaining social distance.

Alipay is practically a bank

It may sound impossible, but Alipay is actually a bank without a single physical branch. It offers payment services between customers and merchants and extends loans, insurance, investment options, and more. If you want to survive in China, you can do it without any cash.

Smartphone, QR code payments

Everyone relies on their smartphone for payments, and the country has replaced plastic cards or cash in favor of QR codes. And, Alipay also ensures you don’t have to go anywhere else for your daily needs. Groceries? Alipay. Parking charges? Alipay. Flight tickets? Alipay. The answer to everything is just one app. While WeChat’s Super App model has gotten everyone’s attention, Ant Group capitalized by understanding it’s users on a more personal level.

This has been a common way of paying in China for a while. If you saw the 2018 version of popular teen drama Meteor Garden which was set in China, it was fairly noticeable that store transactions were made via QR code.

The app has access to everyone’s purchase trends, and being a payment layer, it has access to an unimaginable amount of data. Using this, it cross-sells and upsells high-value financial products, directly improving engagement and clocking consistent growth.

Instead of relying on a conventional bank, Alipay is much more convenient, faster, and accessible for the ordinary Chinese.

CreditTech

Ant Group’s most important division has to be CreditTech. It provides quick or instant credit lines to consumers and small businesses. Ant is the largest digital microfinance service provider in China and is viewed as a perfect way to infuse liquidity at the grassroots level. A conventional bank doesn’t possess the technology or the reach that Alipay can provide.

Hence, Ant Group works in tandem with banks and extends simplified financial services to everyone. The Chinese giant works with over 100 banks, and all loans are then securitized at the institutional level.

Services for everyone

Ideally, if you want a loan, you’ll have to apply in a bank, submit collaterals, negotiate the interest rate, and receive the sum. This is a lengthy and slow process that needs higher standards of due diligence. Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of people don’t have access to loans and are not included in the formal banking system.

Ant Group helps bridge this gap. With Alipay, you can maintain a digital wallet on the go, pay anyone within a second, and use other financial services within the app. Based on your spending, income, and lifestyle, the algorithm can understand you at a personal level. These data points can then be used to determine whether you’re eligible for a loan or credit line.

Instead of relying on conventional modes of applying for a loan, most users are prompted with pre-approved offers that are already made, keeping the individual in mind. It takes the platform just a few minutes to approve an application, and money is disbursed almost instantly.

The investment division of the company is called InvestTech and makes it easy for anyone to join up. Choose from a host of options like mutual funds and grow your money in the same app where you usually spend it. Similarly, it has also bridged the insurance industry within the app, and experts claim it could be the largest online insurance services platform in China in terms of premiums generated.

China loves Alipay, what about others?

Currently, 95 percent of Ant’s revenues come from Mainland China. Alibaba has already made massive international bets in markets like India, Indonesia, Thailand, and more.

Alipay supports 27 currencies and works with many international financial institutions to ensure cross-border payments for Chinese traveling overseas and facilitate the international purchase on Alibaba.

It has already won a virtual banking license in Hong Kong and is applying for one in Singapore. Cooperation and partnerships are already functional in Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand.

However, international expansion doesn’t look very promising at the moment because of the ongoing anti-China sentiments. The US has clamped down on Chinese technology companies like Huawei and ByteDance due to security concerns. If the world is worried about data collection via a short-video streaming app, will it be open to a Chinese company whose primary business is based on data collection?

India is a lucrative market, and Alibaba has tried to replicate the same model via its investment in super app Paytm. Indo-China relations have also radically deteriorated in recent months, and Chinese app developers have faced the consequences. Although Alibaba investments remain relatively stable in the country, new growth opportunities are bleak.

We live in a global economy today, and protectionism isn’t exactly helping anyone. However, with the boom in data, the risk has also increased manifold, and countries have to be on the lookout. In the case of Ant Group, their future within Mainland China looks very prosperous.

The most valuable unicorn on the planet is likely to make its hotly anticipated debut on Shanghai’s STAR Market and Hong Kong’s stock market on November 5, two days after the US election.

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Cebu Pacific becomes 1st SEA low-cost carrier with Starlink Wi-Fi

Rollout expected to begin in 2027

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July 15, 2026

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Cebu Pacific has introduced Starlink, making it the first low-cost airline in Southeast Asia to bring Wi-Fi in the sky for passengers.

The rollout is expected to begin in 2027. Starlink delivers an unparalleled broadband experience inflight, with high-speed, low-latency Wi-Fi capable of HD streaming, online gaming, productivity and more.

Beyond enhancing the passenger experience, Starlink will also support improved operational connectivity for Cebu Pacific’s flight crews and operational teams. This enables better operational efficiency.

The collaboration is a significant milestone for Philippine aviation. The rollout forms part of Cebu Pacific’s continued investment in customer experience and digital innovation.

As part of the partnership, Cebu Pacific and Indigo Partners portfolio airlines, Wizz Air, and JetSMART expect to install Starlink on over 1,000 aircraft.

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Enterprise

Google ordered to pay EUR 4.1 billion in fines

The EU alleges that Google uses its apps to establish an unfair dominance.

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July 3, 2026

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European fines have unintentionally become a normal part of doing business in the American technology space. For too long have American companies paid paltry fines to prevent harsher regulation in the European Union. Now, for the first time, Google is about to pay a record-breaking fine that goes beyond “paltry.”

Today, via CNBC, Google has been ordered to pay an astonishing EUR 4.1 billion (or approximately US$ 4.67 billion) in fines. The fine is in response to an anti-competition case.

This has been a long time coming for Google. The original case started in 2018. At the time, the European Union accused the brand of using anti-competitive practices to ensure its dominance in the smartphone market. According to the courts, the company’s bundling of first-party apps for every Android smartphone gives them an unfair advantage in the market and lessens the user’s choice in selecting apps.

For years, Google has fought the fine to seemingly no avail. Now, the company has lost its final attempt, which means that the fine still stands. On the bright side, they did get it reduced from the original EUR 4.34 billion fine.

The European Union is the scourge of every American tech company (and a godsend to consumers). Most notably, the continent’s government forced Apple to adopt USB-C, leading to a more universal experience across brands.

Google’s hefty fine aims to do the same. And it is quite hefty. Whereas previous fines were in the millions (and hence, negligible for most companies), a fine in the billions is more tangible.

SEE ALSO: Google might limit free storage to only 5GB

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foodpanda relaunches cult-favorite roast chicken brand after 8 years of persistent search queries

Heritage chain Andok’s returns to the platform, driven entirely by long-term user analytics.

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June 19, 2026

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In the world of e-commerce and food delivery, platform algorithms usually dictate what consumers see. But occasionally, consumer behavior is so relentless that it shapes the platform’s strategy.

In a move driven entirely by long-term user analytics, foodpanda has officially relaunched Andok’s, one of the Philippines’ most iconic heritage rotisserie chains, back onto its platform after an eight-year absence.

The search bar as a digital wishlist

The decision to ink the partnership wasn’t just a marketing play. It was a response to an ongoing data anomaly. Despite being offline from the foodpanda platform for eight years, Andok’s consistently ranked as one of the most-searched merchants on the app.

Year after year, users treated the empty search results page as an unofficial wishlist. This persistent search intent gave foodpanda a clear, data-backed signal of pent-up demand.

Prior to the official digital rollout, teaser campaigns on social media validated this demand, generating thousands of organic interactions from users anticipating the return.

Bridging heritage flavor with digital infrastructure

For foodpanda, onboarding a merchant with this level of built-in demand fits its broader strategy of marketplace optimization and hyper-local network expansion, turning a heritage brand into another data point for how legacy retail plugs into delivery infrastructure.

For Andok’s, the integration works as a fast track to digital scale. A legacy quick-service chain skips years of independent app development and reaches customers already using foodpanda’s existing logistics network, on a platform they already check daily.

Andok’s built its following on charcoal spit-roasted chicken, a slow-cooked technique that’s stayed largely unchanged since the brand’s early days, alongside seasoned grilled pork belly.

More recently, the Dokito line extended that following into crispy fried chicken and chicken burgers, broadening the brand’s appeal beyond its original rotisserie format and giving foodpanda a menu with both heritage pull and everyday fast-food convenience.

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