Alibaba - News, Articles & Research

Alibaba backtracks on cloud division split amid global uncertainties

Alibaba Group has cancelled its plans to spin-off its cloud division due to uncertainties from US exports on AI chips.

17 November 2023

Company announcement/cloud

Alibaba Cloud launches open-source vision language model

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has launched two open-source large vision language models (LVLM), Qwen-VL and its conversationally fine-tuned Qwen-VL-Chat. The models can comprehend images, texts and bounding boxes in prompts and facilitate multi-round question answering in both English and Chinese.

25 August 2023

News/payments

Alibaba sells $126 million stake in Paytm

Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba Group, sold a 3.1% stake in the Indian digital payments firm, Paytm, via a block trade on Thursday.

13 January 2023

Company announcement/retail

Banca Sella brings Italian SMEs to Alibaba.com

Supporting Italian SMEs in their international business projects of growth, development and competitiveness, taking advantage of the great opportunities offered by digital export: this is the purpose of the agreement signed by Banca Sella and Business Vision, a company specializing in digital commerce development and an Alibaba's Global Service Partner that will allow Italian SMEs to land on the B2B marketplace and thus expand their presence in foreign markets.

09 June 2022

Company announcement/payments

TransferMate opens doors to Alibaba merchants

TransferMate Global Payments, the world’s leading provider of payments infrastructure as a service, today announced a new collaboration to introduce its simple cross-border payment experience to sellers and buyers of Alibaba.com, a leading ecommerce platform for global wholesale trade.

16 June 2021

News/wholesale

HSBC to use third party data to approve rapid loans for Alibaba merchants

HSBC has forged a partnership with Chinese logistics firm Cainiao to offer fast trade finance loans to online merchants using Alibaba's Tmall platform in Hong Kong.

20 March 2020

News/payments

ICBC, Alibaba and Ant Financial strengthen fintech partnership

Giants in their own right, ICBC - the world's largest bank in terms of assets - will work with Alibaba and Ant Financial by leveraging their collective expertise in electronic payment settlement and cross border finance to promote the wider use of digital technology in financial services.

16 December 2019

Company announcement

Credorax introduces WeChat Pay, Alipay and UnionPay to European merchants

Credorax, the smart payments provider and licensed bank for cross-border eCommerce and omni-channel payments, announced today partnerships with WeChat Pay, Alipay and UnionPay, making it one of the first acquirers to offer European merchants the ability to support payments from all three top Chinese mobile payment methods.

29 October 2019

News

Alibaba acquires a third of Ant Financial

Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba has acquired a 33% stake in banking behemoth Ant Financial, strengthening ties between the two Internet giants.

24 September 2019

Company announcement

Alipay and Lyf Pay Join nexo standards

nexo standards, the international association dedicated to enabling fast, interoperable and borderless payments acceptance, today announces that Alipay and Lyf Pay have become Principal and Associate Members of the association respectively.

18 July 2019

Company announcement

Alipay scores deal with Uefa

UEFA has announced a new exciting partnership with Alipay, the world’s leading payment and lifestyle platform, which is aimed at reinventing fan engagement experiences and bringing Chinese fans of European national team football even closer to the action than ever before.

12 June 2019

News/payments

Barclaycard opens up to Alipay

Barclaycard, which processes nearly half of the UK’s credit and debit card transactions, has extended an existing provisional agreement with Alipay, enabling retailers across the country to accept the Chinese payment app at the point-of-sale.

14 March 2019

News

Ant Financial launches core banking product

Ant Financial is furthering its ambitions to become a strategic technology supplier to the traditional baking industry, unveiling a new core banking platform co-developed with Hoperun Information Technology.

07 March 2019

Company announcement

Alipay launches cross-border mobile payments for Hong Kong travellers

AlipayHK announced today that it will launch cross-border payment services in the Greater Bay Area and Japan, offering Hong Kong travellers smart, cashless payment experiences in some of their most frequented destinations.

26 February 2019

News/payments

Ant Financial seals WorldFirst takeover

Ant Financial has confirmed its agreement to acquire UK-based currency transfer operator WorldFirst.

14 February 2019

News/payments

WorldFirst shutters US operation to save Ant Financial deal

UK money transfer firm WorldFirst has shuttered its US operations to ward off any regulatory objections to a proposed take over by Ant Financial

01 February 2019

News/payments

Alipay awarded e-money licence in Luxembourg

Alipay, the mobile payment arm of Chinese behemoth Alibaba, has been granted an e-money licence in Luxembourg.

21 January 2019

News

Ant Financial in talks to buy WorldFirst

Alibaba's financial service brand Ant Financial is in advanced talks to buy UK currency transfer service WorldFirst, according to reports by Sky News.

02 January 2019

News

Vipps and ePassi to use Alipay QR Code for interoperability

Norway's Vipps and Finland's ePassi have adopted Alipay's QR Code standard to enable interoperability for the four million users of their mobile wallets.

12 December 2018

News

ECB launches real-time payments system

The European Central Bank has unveiled its response to the rise of digital wallets with the launch of Target Instant Payments Settlement (TIPS), a pan-eurozone instant payments system.

30 November 2018