Alibaba, the parent company of Ant Group, is pursuing a plan to list China’s largest mobile payment company on the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges, promising to become the largest IPO event this year.

The `jewel` of the Alibaba empire is growing strongly.

Ant is expanding aggressively across Asia, collaborating and providing expertise in asset management and risk control to technical payments providers in places such as India and Thailand.

Logo accepting payment by Ant Group’s Alipay e-wallet.

Ant chose China International Capital Corp, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

`Despite having abundant capital, it is unclear how investors will evaluate Ant Group because there are many technology stocks on the market,` said Mr. Pamela Chung, IPO expert at consulting firm Tricor Group in Vietnam.

Parallel listings, once the preferred option for China’s largest corporations, from banks to oil companies, have fallen out of favor partly because of the complexities involved in selling shares through

This decision also helps the Hong Kong exchange `revive` technology stocks after losing the opportunity to welcome China’s largest technology companies such as Alibaba – the company that owns a third of Ant – to the New York exchange.

Ant was valued at $150 billion in its last funding round.

Instead, Ant is shifting its focus to its ambition to build a presence in Asia, where it is behind nine payments startups, including Paytm in India and GCash in the Philippines.

Domestically, they expanded into consumer services and technology.

Simon Hu is betting that those strategies will help Ant maintain dominance in China’s $29 trillion mobile payments market.

Ant also diversified its business into less sensitive areas after the company came under regulatory scrutiny over its expansion of financial services with domestic products.