Coolest Brands 2016: Alipay
The Numbers Gamer
PayPal is to eBay as Alipay is to Alibaba. Only on steroids.
To heck with Super Bowl ads — the coolest alternative payments company on the planet is Alipay. So China’s economy is stalling. So regulation gives Alipay advantages over even MasterCard and Visa. Alipay is a payments startup on a level of hypergrowth perhaps never witnessed in model financial services.
Launched in 2004, Alibaba is now estimated to control half of China’s online payment market. The company has at least 300 million users. PayPal, by comparison, had about 179 million at the end of last year. Simply put, it is hard for Chinese online shoppers to avoid Alipay. And Alipay, a subsidiary of Ant Financial Services Group, has only recently started to make a global push.
Alipay has a coolness not based on Apple Pay-like revolution, but on numbers. And numbers, in financial services, matter. Especially when they are on steroids.
