Two weeks, Ant Group, the parent of the hugely successful Alipay wallet, announced plans for an IPO expected to be around $200 billion. This week, the Chinese press reported unconfirmed news that the Chinese central bank was investigating delinquency rates for loans made by Chinese banks jointly with others, particularly with Ant Borrowing and Ant Huabei.
We wondered about the timing given Ant’s recent IPO announcement but wrote it off as a COVID related issue. Then today there’s an unverified Reuters report that the State Council’s Antitrust committee is considering a competition investigation into Alipay and its competitor WeChat Pay which together process more than 90% of mobile payments.
Both investigations may not be hard to justify. It’s the timing that’s so curious, if these are more than just rumors.
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