Alibaba Reportedly Launched Two Blockchain Subsidiaries

Alibaba’s payment arm Ant Financial is launching two blockchain subsidiaries in Shanghai, called Ant Blockchain Technology and Ant Double Chain Technology. The two subsidiaries were incorporated last year in December, and their registered capital is nearly $150,000, as seen from the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System data.

The reports show that the two companies will focus on two main areas.

Ant Blockchain Technology and Ant Double Chain

Ant Blockchain Technology will turn its attention toward software and network development, big data services, financial and technology consultation, including computer information engineering.

Ant Double Chain will engage in data and financial information services, design, research and development of financial products, and so on, with the report noting that the name ‘Double Chain’ is for the two things the company wants to focus on on – blockchain and supply chain.

With this initiative, Alibaba wants to get involved in the field of blockchain, mostly in the areas that are related to supply chain finance, electronic bill application and so on.

Ant Financial (Alipay) is the online and mobile payments service provider that has more than 520,000,000 users.

The executive chairman of Alibaba Group, Jack Ma also explained how blockchain could help people verify products on Alibaba if they are authentic through better tracking of the supply chain:

“AI, Blockchain and IoT will be meaningless tech unless they can promote the transformation of the manufacturing industry, and the evolution of the society towards a greener and more inclusive direction.”

Jack Ma also added that he is confident the blockchain technology will have many applications in the supply chain space, adding that this tech is not necessarily going to make people rich, but can impact humankind in the future:

“Blockchain should not be a tech to get rich overnight…There are still 1.7 billion people in the world who have no bank accounts, but most of them have mobile phones. The impact of blockchain on the future of humans may be far beyond our imagination.”