What you need to know
After buying US based Moneygram and investing in Thai Ascend Money and Philippine Mynt, Ant Financial are investing in another payments network. This time it is investing in Kakao Pay from South Korea. It will help expand its services into an offline network in South Korea. Kakao Pay offers over-counter payments, peer-to-peer transactions, bill payment, web banking, and will soon offer loans and financing too
Why this is important
Ant Financial is the biggest fintech in the word, even bigger than Paypal. It is growing its dominance through south east Asia mainly by acquiring big firms. This strategy is deemed by Ant as better than organic growth, which can burn a lot cash trying to slowly gain market share. We can expect more acquisitions coming on this year.
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