Yan Yan Chen, who covers strategic investments at Ant Financial Services Group, the operator of Alipay, the world’s largest mobile and online payments platform, as well as Yu’e Bao, the world’s largest money-market fund, and the Sesame Credit rating system.
Ant Financial, officially founded in October 2014 originated as Alipay back in 2004 as part of China-based online retailer Alibaba and remains affiliated with its former parent through the stake held in both by Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Alibaba.
As well as its domestic success, Ant has targeted international expansion based on the growing number of Chinese tourists travelling overseas and has set partnership with local partners in more than 10 Asian countries and regions such as Hong Kong, India, the Philippines and Thailand.
Ant’s largest international deals include Paytm, an India-based payments service formed by One97 Communications, Ascend Money (Thailand), Kbank/Kakao (Korea), Emtek/BBM (Indonesia), Mynt (Philippines), and Vendio, Auctiva and Singlefeed in the US.
However, since Chen joined in spring last year, Ant has invested in a number of bike-hailing services, including Youon Bike, Ofo and Hellobike as well as areas Chen developed expertise in from her time as a vice-president of China Aviation Industrial Fund and electronics engineering degree at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, including computer vision, such as the investment in Megvii.
Megvii, the China-based facial recognition technology developer also known as Face-plus-plus, had secured about $460m in November from a consortium including Ant.
In September, Ant unveiled its facial recognition payment technology through its Alipay services so the collaboration with portfolio companies could come in useful.