Ant Group has set the price for its shares of its dual IPO today, and it is shaping up to be the largest public offering to-date, coming in at $34.5 billion.

The IPO will be spread equally through 1.67 billion new shares issued on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, which is expected to raise $17.24 billion (HK$133.65 billion), and 1.67 billion new shares issued on Shanghai’s Star Market, which is expected to raise $17.23 billion (¥115 billion).

Ant will debut on November 5 on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng. The company has not disclosed a date for its planned offering on Shanghai’s Star Market.

Ant’s new valuation is anticipated to top $313 billion, up from an estimated value of $218 billion earlier this year. According to Statista, this valuation, when compared to U.S. megabanks, sits only below JP Morgan Chase, which has a market capitalization of $434 billion.

The anticipated $34.5 billion raise is a record amount, breaking the previous highest IPO set when oil company Saudi Aramco went public at $29.4 billion earlier this year. Ant’s parent company Alibaba holds the record for the second-highest IPO when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 and raised $24 billion. 

Alibaba plans to maintain its 33% share in Ant Group by having its subsidiary Zhejiang Tmall Technology purchase 730 million shares in the company.

As we reported earlier this year, Ant’s double-listing is intentionally avoiding U.S. markets. This is not only because of geopolitical tensions, but also to take advantage of new innovations in both Hong Kong and Shanghai markets, which offer weighted voting rights and offer more market-driven pricing than other domestic exchanges.

Ant was founded in 2014 and has more than 1.3 billion active annual users. Simon Hu is CEO.

Another day, another acquisition in the payments space: U.S. payment processor PaymentCloud announced this week that it has acquired contactless payments provider Paysley. Payment Cloud purchased the majority share of the Los Angeles, California-based company; the amount of the transaction was not disclosed.

Paysley’s technology enables customers to use their smartphone as the point of sale device – without having to set up an account with the merchant in advance. Paysley leverages QR code technology – an approach common to payments in South Africa where the company’s founders are from – to power secure mobile payments directly from the user’s card, Apple Pay, or Samsung Pay account.

And with one-click payment verification, Paysley’s solution works well with the kind of transactions that are increasingly popular in our post-COVID, gig economy, subscriber-based, P2P world.

“The future of payments is already shifting toward contactless means and now, with the acquisition of Paysley, we will be at the forefront of this shift,” PaymentCloud CEO Shawn Silver said. “I’m eager to bring this innovative solution to fruition at such a pivotal time.”

Currently in the process of relocating its 55 employees to new offices in Encino, California, PaymentCloud processes credit cards for thousands of clients around the country. The firm also works with more than 80% of the top digital independent sales organizations (ISOs) to help them boost approval rates, onboard merchants quickly, and limit attrition.

Named to Digital.com’s list of the Best Credit Card Processing Services of 2020, and ranked #295 on the Inc. 5,000, PaymentCloud was founded in 2016.

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What happens when you combine two of fintech’s hottest trends– buy now, pay later (BNPL) and banking-as-a-service? Afterpay is about to find out.

That’s because the Australia-based company has inked an agreement with Westpac to become the bank’s first client for its digital banking-as-a-service offering. The deal will allow Afterpay to offer WestPac checking accounts, savings accounts, and cash flow management tools to its 3.3 million Australian customers.

Afterpay will make the new banking products available in the second quarter of next year.

“The platform allows us to combine our banking experience with the innovation of our partners to support new customer experiences,” said Westpac CEO Peter King. “We look forward to working with Afterpay to deliver new products and services.”

By selling a banking-as-a-service offering, Westpac is finding a way to work alongside third party fintechs. Instead of competing with them, the bank will not only profit from them by selling its banking-as-a-service tools, but also acquire additional client accounts in the process.

Founded in 2014, Afterpay helps merchants to allow shoppers to pay for their purchases in four interest-free installments over a short period of time. The service is offered by more than 50,000 retailers across the globe and is used by more than 9 million shoppers. The company is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange under the ticker ASX and has a market capitalization of almost $29 billion. Anthony Eisen is CEO.

Today’s news comes a week after the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac) cleared Afterpay from anti-money laundering accusations.

Photo by Anthony Fomin on Unsplash

A new merger in the payments space will bolster the accounts receivables and payments solutions available to small and medium businesses. Versapay, a customer-centric order-to-cash solution provider based in Canada, announced this week that it has completed its merger with Twinsburg, Ohio-based, payment services provider Solupay. The combined entity will operate as Versapay in name and will be led by the company’s current CEO Craig O’Neill.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the merger does include a pair of Solupay subsidiaries: payment processors ChargeLogic and 2CP. Solupay’s technology simplifies payment acceptance, provides click-to-pay invoicing, and automates AR processes, and will give Versapay additional opportunities to serve its SME customers.

“Simplifying invoice presentment and reducing the cost of accepting digital payments are the building blocks for a customer-centric order-to-cash process,” O’Neill said. “We’re excited to welcome the complimentary capabilities of the Solupay team and its innovative integrated payments and AR automation technology as we seek to better serve businesses through their digital payments transformation.”

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Versapay has a worldwide network of 8,000 customers and 50,000 users, accounting for $10 billion in payment volume a year. The company’s solutions help businesses accelerate cash conversion, automate manual processes, as well as reduce costs and boost efficiency.

Versapay was acquired by Great Hill Partners in February in a deal that valued the company at $96 million (CAD $126 million).

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For workers in the gig economy, getting paid as quickly as possible is a critical way to manage – to say nothing of survive on – an often-irregular source of income. And with the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, even those working in the traditional, 9-to-5 economy are feeling new levels of financial anxiety.

Responding to this challenge is Clair, a New York-based startup founded last year by Nico Simko (CEO), Erich Nussbaumer (CPO), and Alex Kostecki (COO). The social-impact fintech believes that workers should have access to their wages, without any additional fee or charge, at the end of the work session rather than at some arbitrary point in the future. This week, the company announced a $4.5 million seed fundraising that will help it fulfill its mission of enabling workers to “freely access money they’ve already earned,” said Simko in a statement.

“There are more payday lenders than McDonald’s in the U.S. that charge on average more than 300% annual interest on loans,” he said. “So we have one simple vision: it’s time for change.”

The round was led by Upfront Ventures and featured participation from Founder Collective and Walkabout Ventures. Also involved in the investment were Michael Vaughan, former COO of Venmo, and Paul Appelbaum, founder of Seamless. Combined with $55,000 in pre-seed funding the company picked up in the fall of last year, Clair’s total capital adds up to over $5 million.

Clair combines digital banking functionality – complete with savings account and debit card – with an Instant Pay Access feature that mitigates the temptation workers may feel to resort to high-interest payday lenders. Workers at participating businesses sign up for the service as they would for direct deposit. Once onboarded, they can request free advances on a portion of their earned income via the Clair app (or a partnering app). The advance is loaded onto a Clair debit card and the amount is deducted from the worker’s account on the subsequent payday.

According to Clair, Instant Pay Access provides a reduced reliance on payday loans and more income security in the event of emergency for workers, and turnover reduction and lower check printing costs for businesses. Upfront Ventures partner Aditi Maliwal, who sits on the Clair board of directors, praised the company’s business strategy of avoiding high customer acquisition costs by “creating a product embedded in other services that workers already use.” Simko echoed this point, highlighting not just Clair’s value to SME payroll operations, but also the value that fintechs bring to small businesses more generally.

“With small business employees making up nearly 50% of the country’s workforce, employers often don’t have enough scale to offer better benefits on their own, so they look towards their software providers,” Simko said. “By enabling these providers, we are bridging a gap and empowering them with functionalities their users want.”

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