Published:
Aug 29, 2020
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Ant Group’s IPO filing revealed some very un-ant-like numbers. The group's flagship product, Alipay, does more payment volume ($18t) than Visa and Mastercard combined ($16t), with approximately half in P2P payments. As impressive as that sounds, it is the evolution and diversification of the business that is the story.
Started as Alipay in 2004, Ant Group has transformed from a digital payments company for Alibaba to an aggregator of financial services. Today, the group's lending, wealth management, and insurance offerings count for 63% of its revenue. In the first half of this year, a further shift in revenue generation saw the credit business surpassing payments for the first time ever.
Imagine if 7% of apps available on the Apple store were bundled into a single app - that is essentially what Ant has with over 160,000 mini-apps within one super-app, Alipay.
While the US doesn't have one "super-app", big tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, and even Uber are charting a similar path. Amazon, for example, has partnered with Ola, Tapzo, and Cleartrip to expand their offerings globally while Facebook is focussed on offering community themed services like dating and marketplace.
Ant’s prospectus, for its dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong, states that “we call ourselves Ant because we believe that small is beautiful, small is powerful”, but if the company can keep this pace up, it will be marching on to a valuation more closely resembling an army of unicorns as opposed to anything reminiscent of its name.
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Ant(s) Marching...
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