Dear readers,
Fifteen years ago, the Chinese e-commerce giant (which was not a giant yet) Alibaba started a payment service to help people buy goods on its site. The service, known as Alipay, was comically clunky, relying on fax machines to create a secure way for buyers and sellers to make transactions remotely.
Jump forward to today, and Alipay has been spun out of Alibaba into a company of its own, called Ant Financial. In the process, Ant has become one of the largest fintech companies in the world, with a value of more than $150 billion—twice as much as Goldman Sachs. The company’s app, still called Alipay, can handle more than three times as many transactions per second as Visa, and reaches more than 1 billion users around the world.
This week, Quartz members can access a new in-depth report on the rise of Ant Financial. You can sign up here for a seven-day free trial of membership.
In their deep dive report published today, Quartz finance reporters John Detrixhe and Echo Huang take a close look at Ant Financial’s rapid growth. Throughout the week, John and Echo will examine all the ways Ant is woven into the life of its users. They’ll also highlight the key people running the company, the bitter competition between Ant and its rival, Tencent, and how Ant intends to become not just a Chinese giant, but a global one.
If you sign up for a Quartz membership, you’ll also have access to a new members-only video series focused on China. This week, we’re looking at the app TikTok, an international version of the Chinese karaoke and video app Douyin. On Chinese apps, music is part of a larger ecosystem, incorporating social networking, micropayments and fan culture into an integrated package. On the latest episode of Because China, we take a look at how Chinese apps are changing the way we find, listen to, and interact with our music.
I hope you’ll take advantage of the free trial of Quartz membership and benefit from all of this unique, in-depth reporting.
Best,
Kevin J. Delaney
Editor in chief, cofounder
kevind@qz.com