According to a report from Donews, Chinese payment company Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and operator of AliPay, is planning to publicly launch its enterprise blockchain platform in February 2020.
On Jan. 10, Guofei Jiang, the vice president of Ant Financial, announced this news at the company's annual media meeting. According to Guo, this blockchain platform will be called Ant Blockchain Open Alliance and has been available in beta version since November 2019. The new platform essentially aims to "enable small-scale and micro-enterprises and developers to enter the industry at a lower cost."
Ant Finance has previously launched a blockchain-as-a-service platform, having trialed its first-ever blockchain remittances in the summer of 2018, using its new blockchain-based electronic wallet cross border remittance service.
The blockchain platform has reportedly helped resolved trust issues across 40 sectors, including cross-border remittances and trade finance.
The new Ant Blockchain Open Alliance will reportedly help small and micro enterprises to develop their own blockchain applications at a lower cost. The platform can also support one billion daily transactions and can achieve 100,000 cross-chain information processing capabilities per second.
Since late 2019, all major tech giants of China, including Alibaba, Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), JD.com (NASDAQ: JD) and Tencent (OTC: TCEHY), have either announced or launched their blockchain platforms. Earlier this week, Baidu launched the public beta for its "Xuperchain" open-network blockchain.
At the same time, Ant Financial, the major financial hand of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has been ranked the fifth most valuable private firm in China.
In an inaugural rankings report by Hurun, which is best known for compiling a rich list for China, Ant Financial is the top firm in its field and fifth largest in a ranking of all firms across industries.
The report reveals that Ant Financial has hit a market valuation of $143 billion, based on a closing price from Nov. 29, 2019.
Alibaba ranked top of all private enterprises in the country, at a valuation of $545 billion, followed by WeChat operator Tencent Holdings, at $408 billion, and Ping An Insurance, at $215 billion.