Thread by @ChorzempaMartin

#Ant Prospectus Thread: Ant dwarfs any other #fintech company, but in past (frustratingly for researchers like me) disclosed few, sporadic details abt user #'s, assets, pymnt vol, bad loans, etc.. Prospectus is a treasure trove 1/n

2/n
Payments: 711 million active Alipay users, 1/2 of China's entire population. 80m merchants accept.
118 trillion RMB (17t USD) in payments last 12 mo, 622 billion x-border

Credit: 500m authorized borrowers, 2 tn RMB in consumer and small business loans outstanding

3/n Investments: Half a billion users with over 4.1 trillion RMB (600b USD) invested on its platform. Expanded far beyond Yu'E Bao with most of China's major asset managers vying for $$ from Ant's 500m users.

4/n Turns out, Alipay is still a cash cow for banks, not a competitor. Paid banks 47 billion RMB in fees to get money in & out of Alipay wallets, 3/4 of total cost of services.

98% of funding for Ant's loans came from banks & other financial firms.

5/n How has COVID impacted consumer credit? Overall default rates have nearly doubled in 7 months to ~3%! But they must have really tightened standards post-COVID--new loans are more like .7% default.

6/n Technology is the main focus, not finance:
-Payment systems can handle 460k transactions per second, surely highest in world (Bitcoin can handle 7).
-Over 26k patents & applications, including thousands in blockchain space
-Tech employees are 64% of business.

7/n What is not in the prospectus? Sadly no mention of CCP or the Company's Party Committee and its role in the company's governance. Chinese version too has no results for 共产 or 党. Probably would interest @mcgregorrichard

8/n Watch this space: "due to our large scale of business and close media attention, there can be no assurance that regulators will not initiate anti-monopoly investigations into specific business practices..." Many regulators are itching to investigate..
reuters.com/article/alipay…

9/n geopolitics is making int'l expansion harder than anticipated: "We may also face protectionist policies and regulatory scrutiny, on national security grounds or for other reasons, in foreign countries" --Of course, CN gov kept out foreign competition for years. Karma?

10/10 It is a fascinating snapshot of a behemoth firm and huge fintech sector focusing on tech, mainly because of regulatory pressure that has restricted what they can do in finance. Payment revenue went from 55% of total in 2017 to 36% in most recent 12 mo. Tech now 63.4% of rev