(21 February 2017 – Asia) Alibaba’s finance arm, Ant Financial has revealed yet another deal. The firm will invest US$200 million (A$260 billion) into a fintech project belonging to Kakao, Korea’s dominant messaging service.
As a result of the deal, Ant Financial, which operates Alipay and Alibaba’s digital banking business, will begin to offer its financial services through Kakao Pay in Korea, helping it grow from online payments into offline, banking and financing services.
Kakao Talk, a US$5 billion dollar company, has 48 million users. The service covers 95 percent of smartphones in Korea.
In January, Kakao’s board decided to split its financial services operations into a new enterprise, which will offer financial services such as loans and financing in addition to current services such as over-counter payments, peer-to-peer transactions, bill payment, web banking. Ant Financial currently operates in the space in its home market of China.
Ant Financial is in the process of closing a US$3 billion debt funding round, which the company said will be used for other acquisitions. The Chinese firm is buying US-based MoneyGram for US$880 million, and has made recent investments in Ascend Money (Thailand), Mynt (Philippines) while it also holds equity in Paytm (India) and M-Daq (Singapore).