Alipay Acquires MoneyGram With Blockchain-Based Monetary Programme
Having unsuccessful attempts to buy MoneyGram, Ant Financial is seeking to bang it with the start of a domestic blockchain-based cross-border money transfer service.
The first money transfer passage for the new service will work between Hong Kong and the Philippines via a partnership between AlipayHK and GCash. Standard Chartered, which has created a close relationship with Alipay in Hong Kong, will operate and behave as the resolution bank, with all three parties to the operation performing in concurrent over a shared ledger, authorizing the confirmation, verification and execution of the payment to take place simultaneously.
Jennifer Tan, CEO of Alipay Payment Services (HK) mentions that the service will ground-the-clock, real-time fund transfer between Hong Kong and the Philippines at a competitive exchange tariff with much lower operation fees, which will be in the future canceled during a primary three-month testing term. She mentioned: “What used to be a long process of physically going to a remittance booth, queuing in line for hours and filling out forms, is now easily and securely done over the mobile phone in just a few seconds.”
During the speech at the launch event, Jack Ma, Alibaba Group co-founder, mentioned he has an idea to make it permissible for people to transfer even 1 cent at nearly no cost, in comparison with the large fees charged by usual money transfers services such as MoneyGram.
