Alibaba's Online Bank Secures Launch Approval

Sina Tech, 5/27/15

The Zhejiang Provincial Banking Regulatory Commission has approved the opening of the Zhejiang Internet Commerce Bank (ICB), a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA) affiliate Zhejiang Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group, with RMB 4 bln in registered capital. The ICB will be purely an online bank with no physical branches and no cash business. The bank will target small-scale internet merchants, individual entrepreneurs, and regular consumers, especially rural consumers, said bank president Yu Shengfa. In keeping with this focus, the ICB explicitly states that it will not make loans in excess of RMB 5 mln.

The core system of the ICB is entirely based on Alibaba's self-developed financial cloud computing platform, according to Yu. Traditional commercial banks spend more than RMB 9-digits on IT systems, annually, according to ICB CEO Tang Jiacai, but ICB will significantly lower its operating costs by using Alibaba's financial cloud service.

Keywords: Internet Commerce Bank e-commerce Internet Alibaba Group Yu Shengfa BABA Ant Financial Group online banking

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