Ant Financial, a financial services affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., has led investors to raise $200 million for a startup that provides microloans to Chinese students, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group, Ant Financial for short, said on Tuesday, Aug.11, that its Alipay online-payment unit and Sesame Credit credit-scoring unit would like to work with a new strategic partner, Qufenqi, a company that allows university students to pay online purchases by installments.
A spokeswoman for Ant Financial, however, declined to disclose the amount that the company had invested.
Alipay, the country's most widely used online-and-mobile-payment system, which processes most of e-commerce transactions on Alibaba's shopping sites, has broadened its operations this year by launching Sesame Credit in January and WeBank, an online bank, in June.
According to the report, the business of providing microloans to students is a fast-growing segment of online financial services in China.
Qufenqi, a company based in Beijing, was founded in March 2014, and faces fierce competition from Fenqile, a startup based in Shenzhen, which is backed by Alibaba's e-commerce rival, JD.com Inc.
On Tuesday, Qufenqi released a statement on its WeChat page, calling the investment round one of the largest for a Chinese Internet-finance startup. The statement added that the other participants in the fund-raising round included Chinese online-game publisher Kunlun, Blue Run Ventures and Source Code Capital.
In June this year, Ant Financial had received funding from external investors, including China Development Bank Capital Co. and a holding company affiliated with David Yu, the co-founder of Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma's private equity firm Yunfeng Capital. This brought the value of the company to $45 billion.
Ant Financial confirmed the funding and said that it was proof of investors' faith in the company's future growth and development.