Bloomberg has reported that Alibaba’s finance spinoff, Ant Financial, might be added to the list of digital banks being developed in Singapore.
In Brief:
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Ant Financial told Bloomberg News it is “actively looking” into the opportunity.
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It has already gained similar permission in Hong Kong.
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Up to five licenses are on offer for non-banks.
What does this mean?
The Monetary Authority of Singpaore has been offering permissions in batches to various companies to operate fully digital or virtual banks. At the moment these have included banks such as Standard Chartered (which recently selected Thought Machine to power its project) but we could see challengers and digital companies such as Ant Financial join the mix soon.
