螞蟻金服日活用戶一年翻番

Ant Financial, the payments affiliate of Alibaba, says it has doubled its daily active users in the year to the end of March.

阿里巴巴(Alibaba)的支付業(yè)務關聯(lián)公司螞蟻金服(Ant Financial)表示，其日活用戶人數(shù)在截至3月底的一年里翻了一倍。

Much of the growth came in the first quarter of this year, with numbers up 40 per cent on the previous quarter, according to Ant Financial.

根據(jù)螞蟻金服的說法，這一增長的很大一部分來自今年第一季度，該季度用戶數(shù)比前一季度增加40%。

Alibaba, which reports results today, has a profit-sharing agreement under which it takes 37.5 per cent of Ant’s pre-tax profits.

今天將公布財報的阿里巴巴，與螞蟻金服簽有盈利分享協(xié)議。根據(jù)協(xié)議，阿里巴巴會拿走螞蟻金服37.5%的稅前盈利。

Ant does not disclose the number of active daily users of its Alipay service, but says it has a total of 450m people using its payments and other financial services, including wealth management and insurance. 螞蟻金服并未披露其支付寶(Alipay)服務的日活用戶人數(shù)，而是表示總計有4.5億人使用其支付和其他金融服務，包括理財和保險。

The rate of user growth, hitherto undisclosed, comes as competition is heating up in China’s $5.5tn mobile payments market — the world’s biggest and 50 times the size of the US market.

此前未曾披露的用戶數(shù)增速數(shù)據(jù)出爐之際，在中國5.5萬億美元規(guī)模的移動支付市場，競爭正在不斷升溫。中國移動支付市場的規(guī)模為全球最大，是美國市場規(guī)模的50倍。

Ant had long dominated the market with Alipay, launched in 2004 as a PayPal-type service to facilitate payment on Alibaba’s ecommerce platforms.

長期以來，螞蟻金服通過支付寶主導著該市場。支付寶于2004年推出，當時是一個類似PayPal的服務，用于幫助完成阿里巴巴電商平臺上的支付活動。

But Tencent — one of China’s dominant internet trinity (along with Alibaba and Baidu, collectively known as BAT) has made rapid strides in the past year. Tencent’s WeixinPay now boasts a 37 per cent market share to Alipay’s 54 per cent, based on fourth-quarter data.

然而，騰訊(Tencent)在過去一年里取得了長足的進步。根據(jù)第四季度的數(shù)據(jù)，騰訊的微信支付(WeixinPay)目前擁有37%的市場份額，而支付寶則占54%的市場份額。騰訊是中國占統(tǒng)治地位的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)三駕馬車之一，另外兩家企業(yè)分別是阿里巴巴和百度，三者合稱BAT。

Tencent has been rapidly signing up physical stores: Starbucks this week said 29 per cent of all sales at its 2,628 cafés in mainland China are now paid for with WeixinPay.

騰訊一直在迅速簽下實體店：就在本周，星巴克(Starbucks)表示，其在中國內(nèi)地的全部2628家咖啡廳的全部銷售中，29%是用微信支付的。

Ant has fought back, likewise signing up physical retailers. Earlier this month it agreed a partnership with First Data that gives it access to a potential 4.5m merchants in the US. It has a similar arrangement in Europe with Ingenico and BNP.

螞蟻金服發(fā)起了還擊，同樣簽下了實體零售商。這個月早些時候，該公司與First Data達成了合作，為它打開美國450萬潛在商家的大門。在歐洲，螞蟻金服也與Ingenico及法國巴黎銀行(BNP Paribas)達成了類似安排。

Cyril Han, vice-president of Ant Financial, said Ant is focusing on building its technology, shifting “from fintech to techfin”, meaning it wants to prioritise providing the tech platform for financial services over the services themselves.

螞蟻金服副總裁韓歆毅(Cyril Han)表示，該公司正聚焦于打造自身的技術，“從金融科技轉(zhuǎn)向科技金融”，這意味著螞蟻金服希望把為金融服務提供技術平臺擺在比服務本身更優(yōu)先的地位。

Markets had been banking on an initial public offering from Ant — valued at $60bn at its last funding round in 2016 — proving to be the highlight of this year’s calendar, but the listing is off the agenda until at least the end of next year, the Financial Times reported this week.

市場原本一直寄希望于螞蟻金服的首次公開招股(IPO)會成為今年日歷中的亮點。然而，據(jù)英國《金融時報》本周報道，至少在明年底以前，上市將不在其議程內(nèi)。在2016年進行的上一輪募資過程中，螞蟻金服的估值達到600億美元。