The world’s largest fund manager, BlackRock, has now joined a syndicate of Wall Street banks, brokers and high-speed traders investing $65m in Members Exchange (MemX), the new US stock-trading venue ahead of its planned launch later this year. BlackRock also owns a 3.9% stake in Nasdaq and 4.9% of Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of NYSE, according to data from Refinitiv used by the Financial Times. Banking group Wells Fargo and New York-based hedge fund Manikay Partners also invested in the latest round for MemX. But the global battle is being fought in other areas.
In the Economist’s excellent special report this week on how geopolitics and technology threaten the US’s financial dominance there is an eye-catching data point on how China’s35-fold increase in mobile payments from 2013 to 2019 saw its consumers spend $49 trillion via their phones last year after the development of the QR code and superapps to pay for almost anything out of the digital wallets from Alipay and WeChat Pay.
Alipay, Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial’s wallet, has used corporate venturing to back nine other wallets, while Tencent’s WeChat Pay has taken stakes in others, such as Australia-based Afterpay. Ping An, a large China-based insurer, has set up dozens of fintechs, including OneConnect Financial Technology that listed in New York in January.
Using American capital markets to fund the country’s strategic competitor is impressive.
As The Texas National Security Review noted: “Driven by economic interdependence, the race to develop transformational technologies, and the ubiquity of cyberspace, national security and economics are converging.”
