Here there be dragons, and they’ve started to rule over unicorns—well, in matters of funding, anyway.

According to a new report released by Citigroup on digital disruption, the second of its kind, China has now overtaken the U.S. to claim the No. 1 spot for investments in fintech on a global scale. The country was responsible for 50% of all fintech funding for the first nine months of 2016—not the region of Asia, just China itself—which had the added effect of making Asia the only major region in the world where fintech investments increased over the last year.

Citi’s report attributes these results to the rise of what it terms “Chinese dragons;” Chinese-born companies such as JD Finance, Qufenqi, and of course Ant Financial, the payments provider created by parent company Alibaba which offers China’s most popular mobile payment solution Alipay.

According to Techcrunch’s data on tech startups, Ant Financial is the leading Chinese dragon and second largest unicorn in the world, with a valuation of $60 billion that’s a scant $2.5 billion away from Uber’s current valuation.

From the report:

The simple call for us to make is that Alipay will grow internationally as it follows the ongoing expansion of overseas Chinese tourism. The harder call is how many non-Chinese clients will Chinese companies like Ant Financial and WeChat gain in payments and associated products.

The impact of Ant Financial in 2016 was felt across the fintech globe and, per Citi’s report, it certainly seems set to continue in 2017; at the Davos World Economic Forum this year, the group announced its goals to gain two billion users in 10 years, helped along through the addition of technologies such as blockchain to its Alipay mobile service.

Payments are an area Alibaba has performed extremely well in China, but it remains to be seen if Alipay and the other e-commerce services offered by the group will flourish in additional markets.

To learn more about international fintech funding, join us in San Jose on March 6-7 for Bank Innovation 2017, where the best conversations in fintech take place. Please request your invitation here.