Ant Group is the world’s most valuable startup after a capital call in mid-2018, valuing the company at $150 billion.

This result will also put Jack Ma’s company on the list of the most valuable technology firms in the world.

IPO scale and current capitalization value of the world’s technology giants.

Ant was originally an auxiliary application, intended to fill a gap in the early online shopping sector in China, when buyers and sellers on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms needed reliable payment tools.

In 2004, this application was born as a third party, holding money for the buyer and only paying the seller after the goods have been delivered and the buyer confirms satisfaction with the items received.

Transaction scale in one year of Alipay, Visa and Mastercard.

According to this company’s report, in the period June 2019 – June 2020, Alipay had 711 million active users per month, processing about 17,600 billion USD in payment transactions.

Ant Group considers itself not a financial company but a technology solution provider.

Alipay acts as an intermediary in transactions.

According to the report, Alipay connects about 100 banks in China with consumers and small businesses in need of short-term loans.

In the first 9 months of the year, Jack Ma’s financial company achieved revenue of 118.19 billion yuan (17.73 billion USD), an increase of 42% over the same period last year.

While Ant is considered a `giant` in China, the company’s global presence is quite limited.

Ant also invests in overseas payments companies with e-wallets and offers some cross-border money transfer services, though the majority of revenue still comes from China.