Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding's financial arm Ant Financial Services Group on Tuesday signed a strategic partnership agreement with Thai financial technology firm Ascend Money, as the former aims to expand its mobile payment platform and other financial products to overseas markets.
Under the partnership, Ant Financial will make strategic investments in Ascend Money and bring its inclusive financial model of online and offline payment platforms to Thailand by providing technical and experience support, the company said in a statement sent to the Global Times.
"Our goal is to replicate the Alipay model to Thailand," said Douglas Feagin, senior vice president of Ant Financial. He said he hopes Ant Financial's services and products will reach 50 percent of the Internet users in Thailand within five years.
Details as to the amount of investment Ant Financial will make in Ascend Money were not disclosed in the company statement, but earlier media reports suggested Ant Financial would take a 20 percent stake in Ascend Money and seek an option to increase the stake to 30 percent.
The deal on Tuesday is another step in Ant Financial's drive to reach more users in overseas markets with its online and off-line payment platforms.
Ant Financial has made similar moves in India and South Korea. In 2015, Ant made two rounds of investments in Indian financial technology firm Paytm, which is now said to have 150 million users. In South Korea, it has gained preliminary approval to establish an Internet bank.
Ant Financial, said to be world's largest financial technology company, is valued at $60 billion after raising $4.5 billion in record funding in April.
The company said it had more than 200 million users globally at the end of October and aims to increase that number to 2 billion users within the next 10 years, with 60 percent of them coming from overseas markets.
