On June 25, AlipayHK, the Hong Kong version of Alipay, launched a blockchain-based e-wallet cross-border remittance service. AlipayHK users can use their mobile phones to transfer money to the Philippine wallet Gcash based on blockchain technology. Jing Xiandong, chairman and CEO of Ant Financial, said that this means that all Hong Kong wallet users will be able to transfer money to Filipino users in real time. Jack Ma witnessed the first remittance at the press conference in Hong Kong.
Standard Chartered Bank will provide settlement services for AlipayHK and GCash, and provide real-time foreign exchange rates and liquidity. During the first three months of service trial, you can also enjoy a fee waiver. Statistics show that the Philippines was the third largest market for receiving remittances in the world in 2017, with an amount of US$33 billion.
Hong Kong has a large number of domestic service workers from the Philippines. They need to remit money back home every month to support the study and life of the old and young at home. Ant Financial invited Grace, a Hong Kong domestic service worker from Manila, on the spot. She said that in the past, each remittance often had to be queued for more than an hour, and her brother in the Philippines had to take a car to another place far away from home to queue up for withdrawals. In the past, when this model encountered emergencies in which money was urgently needed, distant water could not save nearby fires. According to Ant Financial, there are nearly 200,000 Filipinos like Grace living and working in Hong Kong.
There are many pain points in the traditional cross-border remittance business: because more participating institutions, laws and regulations, exchange rates and other issues are involved, the process is very complicated, and it usually takes 10 minutes to a few days to arrive at the account; remittances after 7 pm are the earliest the next day When you go to the counter, you should also pay attention to the off-duty time; if there is a situation in the middle, it will take longer to refund the money, and it may be lost.
Ma Yun said at the scene that at the beginning of Alipay’s establishment, he hoped to provide services related to cross-border remittances, which came from a discussion between a Filipino friend and him. Ma Yun said that he did not expect that cross-border remittances through banks would charge that much; he also shared his experience of queuing up for several currency exchanges at the bank. Previously, Ant Financial had hoped to acquire MoneyGram, but the acquisition failed because of the lack of approval from the US regulators.
Ant Financial CTO Cheng Li said that the underlying accounting system provided by Ant Financial uses the alliance chain. He said that there are five functions of blockchain technology for remittance: one is fast; , because the original complicated reconciliation process is reduced; fifth, it is more transparent to users.
Ant Financial has been in the blockchain field for a long time. In 2015, Ant Financial established a blockchain team. By the end of 2016, the blockchain team of Ant Financial was formally established. In February 2017, Jiang Guofei joined Ant Financial as the vice president of Ant Financial and established a technical laboratory, and the blockchain team was incorporated into the system.
Jing Xiandong said at the scene that the blockchain of Ant Financial has the boundary of doing three things and not doing three things: using blockchain to solve practical problems with social value; Technical barriers; work with partners to build an open blockchain ecosystem. Dont do air coins without any real value; dont do technical applications that violate laws and regulations; dont do anything that harms user data security and privacy.
According to previous 36 Krypton reports, the intellectual property industry media IPRdaily and the incoPat Innovation Index Research Center released the 2017 Global Blockchain Enterprise Patent Ranking (Top 100), and Alibaba ranked first. Most of the patent applications come from Ant Financial.
Hu Danqing, a blockchain expert at the Ant Financial Technology Laboratory, once told 36 Krypton that Ant Financial promotes the blockchain as a trust link facility, starting from the credibility of data, and then to the credibility of objects and assets. believable. The landing scenarios they choose all have one thing in common: to solve the sense of security and trust that ordinary people lack. Such as public welfare donations, house leasing, mutual insurance and authenticity traceability, etc.
Previously, on February 10, Xiongan New District announced the implementation of a housing rental points system and launched the first blockchain rental application platform. This is also the first case in the country. On this government-led unified blockchain platform, listing information, identity information of landlords and tenants, and housing lease contract information will be verified by multiple parties and must not be tampered with. It is reported that China Construction Bank, Lianjia, Ant Financial and other institutions participated in the construction of this rental model. Among them, Ant Financial is the core blockchain technology provider, while Lianjia and CCB provide housing rental information and other services.
Other application scenarios of Ant Financials blockchain technology include public welfare and product traceability.
On the basis of the public welfare project launched in July 2016, in March 2017, the Alipay love donation platform introduced blockchain technology, and all donation data was uploaded to the chain. It was launched in September 2017, and the traceability project was launched. Users can scan the QR code on the packaging of imported food from Australia and New Zealand to see that the product has passed quality inspection overseas, passed overseas warehouses, domestic bonded warehouses, sold on Tmall and in the middle of each other. logistics information. Ant Financial provides the underlying blockchain technology. In October 2017, the blockchain technical team further exported this technical solution for the traceability of Moutai.
According to media reports, Ant Financial will launch a blockchain BaaS platform in the future.
(I am Lu Xiaoming, editor of Odaily. I am exploring the real blockchain. Please add WeChat lohiuming for breaking news and communication. Please note your name, unit, position and reason.)
