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Buy Now Pay Later Meets Open Banking; Payment Cards and the Post-Plastic Era

Buy Now Pay Later Meets Open Banking; Payment Cards and the Post-Plastic Era
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, MasterCard

Buy Now, Pay Later Still Paying Off: One of 2020’s most unanticipated ecommerce trends, buy now pay later (BNPL) installment payment schemes, continues to show no signs of slowing down as the year draws toward a close. QuadPay, a BNPL innovator based in New York City that we featured earlier this month, just announced that it has added a new Chrome browser extension enables users to access Quadpay across all devices that can power a Chrome web browser.

“The introduction of Quadpay for Chrome will accelerate overall BNPL adoption for pandemic-weary consumers who are looking for flexible payment terms anywhere they shop without accruing new debt,” Quadpay Co-CEO Brad Lindenberg said. “It will also serve to drive new customers and increased loyalty for retailers at a critical time.”

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a U.K.-based startup that is trying out its own version of the buy now, pay later strategy has become the first BNPL outfit in the U.K. to be granted a consumer credit authorization with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Zilch, which was founded in 2018 by Philip Belamant, specializes in using open banking data and soft credit checks to help ensure that customers who use its BNPL service have sufficient creditworthiness and can afford their purchase. The company is partnered with Mastercard, enabling the merchant-agnostic Zilch to be used as an installment payment solution wherever Mastercard is accepted.

“Zilch was built with customer affordability at the forefront of everything we do and we have been working towards this point since our conception,” Belamant said. “Having secured our consumer credit authorization with the FCA is another step towards improving consumer financial wellness and removing credit related anxiety for our customers.”

Corn on the Card? A few weeks back we read about a $1 million investment that eco-friendly, U.K.-based search engine Ecosia made in TreeCard, a company that offers a debit card made out of wood.

And not just any wood. According to a post at the Ecosia blog, “each TreeCard will be unique, since the debit cards are made of sustainably sourced cherry wood.” The announcement notes that a single one of these trees can produce 300,000 cards.

Not to be outdone, Swiss-based UBS has introduced a credit card made out of an equally unlikely substance: corn.

Specifically, the new Optimus Foundation Credit Card Eco is composed of a plastic substitute known as PLA. This substance is derived from animal feed corn, and has a biodegradability of more than 80%.

“The transition to a more sustainable society is one of the greatest challenges of our time,” Karin Oertli, COO, personal and corporate banking and Region Switzerland, said. “UBS wants to be a part of the solution and lead the way with innovative ideas. Our new cards, which are made without plastic, are contributing to this.”

FinovateWest Digital is taking place this week. Our all-digital fintech conference runs from Monday, November 23 through Wednesday, November 25. Join us for both live and on-demand access to hours of innovative fintech demos, insightful analysis, and robust debate and discussion on the most important topics in fintech today.

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OurCrowd Pulls in $60 Million to Deepen Ties in Japan

OurCrowd Pulls in $60 Million to Deepen Ties in Japan
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, OurCrowd

Venture investing platform OurCrowd is taking home an investment of its own this week. The Israel-based company announced today it received $60 million in capital from Japan-based ORIX. The investment brings OurCrowd’s total funding to $172 million.

The goal of the funding and strategic partnership is to bring opportunities for Israel-based startups in the Asia region and will strengthen trade between the two regions.

“We are excited about investing in OurCrowd, Israel’s most active venture investor and one of the world’s most innovative venture capital platforms,” said ORIX UK CEO Kiyoshi Habiro. “We intend to be active partners with OurCrowd and help them accelerate their already impressive growth, while bringing the best of Israeli tech to Japan’s large industrial and financial sectors.”

Today’s deal isn’t the first time OurCrowd has made Japanese ties. Last year the company teamed up with Toyota Tsusho Corporation, a Japanese general trading company, to scout for startups that support autonomous driving industry.

OurCrowd was founded in 2013 and offers a platform that allows its 58,000 users to invest in 220+ pre-vetted startups and 23 venture funds. Jonathan Medved is CEO.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

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Juvo Brings Digital Identities to the Underbanked; BondIT Merges with Scorable

Juvo Brings Digital Identities to the Underbanked; BondIT Merges with Scorable
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BondIT, Finovate Global, Juvo, MasterCard, Personetics, Revolut

Financial-identity-as-a-service (FiDaaS) pioneer – and FinovateFall alum – Juvo announced earlier this week that it is working with Mastercard’s Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) team to bring its FiDaaS platform to financial institutions throughout the region.

“Financial institutions across LAC face a dilemma,” Juvo CEO and founder Steve Polsky explained. “Consumers can’t demonstrate their creditworthiness to gain access to credit. Without access to credit, however, consumers can’t establish creditworthiness.”

Juvo’s technology leverages machine learning to analyze transaction data to assess an individual’s ability to repay loans and meet other financial obligations. The company’s partnership with Mastercard is in large part a product of its participation in Mastercard’s Start Path fintech startup engagement program last August. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Juvo was founded in 2014.

Innovation in the wealth management space is increasingly an international affair. This week, Israel-based portfolio construction technology provider BondIT announced that it has agreed to merge with Germany’s Scorable. Headquartered in Berlin, Scorable provides AI-powered credit analysis and will, per this transaction, combine its technology with BondIT’s in order to offer an integrated portfolio-management-and-research-as-a-service solution for asset managers and financial advisors.

“Fixed income investors still rely heavily on manual-driven procedures, but in light of market and cost pressures, intelligent automation is increasingly necessary to stay competitive,” said BondIT CEO Etai Ravid. “Merging our technologies allows us to even better serve the evolving digital needs of our clients by helping them optimize their portfolio and risk management to boost efficiency, performance and scale.”

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2016, BondIT offers a scalable platform that uses both machine learning and data science to provide financial analysts and advisors with optimized portfolios and portfolio analysis. Founded in 2012 and based in Herzliya, Israel, BondIT has raised $18.5 million in funding from investors including Fosun International.

Here is our look at fintech around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Fintech Futures profiles Indian fintech PayNearby that is leveraging small, brick and mortar retailers to provide ATM and branch banking services.
  • Pakistan fintech Tag earns “in principle” approval for an electronic money institute license from country’s central bank; plans to launch financial superapp.
  • Express Computer looks at the evolution of fintech in India.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Banco Pichincha Peru teams up with U.S.-based no-code mobile security platform Appdome to secure its mobile app.
  • The Central Bank of the Bahamas launches digital sand dollar, a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
  • Brazil’s central bank launches PIX instant payments platform; suggests possible return of WhatsApp.

Asia-Pacific

  • Singapore’s Lu International and Thailand’s Kasikornbank (KBank) partner to introduce new wealth management platform.
  • P2P investment network SeedIn, based in Singapore, announces rebranding to BRDGE; expansion to Indonesia.
  • Hong Kong based digital payment services platform Statrys raises $5 million in funding.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • The days of paper checks in South Africa are numbered according to a joint communique from the country’s Reserve Bank, Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), and other government agencies and banking industry associations.
  • Chipper Cash, which offers no fee, P2P payment services in seven African countries, raises $30 million in funding.
  • Nigerian fintech Wallets Africa partners with Visa to provide customers with physical Visa cards for domestic and international payments.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Revolut introduces Open Banking options for its German customers.
  • German fintech and challenger bank Vivid Money secures $17.6 million in funding.
  • Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) goes live with its API marketplace.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • UAE-based payment service for retailers Spotii announces expansion to Saudi Arabia.
  • Trade Arabia takes a look at the fintech agreement between the Israeli Securities Authority (ISA) and the Abu Dhabi Global Market Financial Services Regulatory Authority (ADGM FSRA).
  • Two Israeli companies – ChargeAfter and Personetics – join Visa Fintech Partner Connect to bring payment technology innovation to Europe.

Photo by Elianne Dipp from Pexels

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FintechOS Launches Lighthouse to Accelerate Digital Transformations

FintechOS Launches Lighthouse to Accelerate Digital Transformations
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fintech OS

Financial services technology company FintechOS unveiled its latest solution to help banks, insurance, and other financial services companies accelerate and complete their digital transformations. The new offering, Lighthouse, is an end-to-end platform that features a variety of product and UX enhancements that speed innovation without requiring businesses to overly rely on developers and technical talent.

“Digital transformation is big, slow, and expensive,” FintechOS co-founder and CEO Teo Blidarus said. “Instead, institutions need to extract value from existing systems, databases, and business logic by thinking big, starting small, and scaling fast.”

Among the enhancements introduced this week are:

  • Product Factory: enables institutions to use existing data sets to develop customer eligibility requirements and define more personalized products
  • Enhanced Journey Designer: enables businesses to build customer journeys without relying on IT teams
  • Hybrid Data Models and Ecosystem Connectors: enables institutions to use and expose a wide variety of data types (local, legacy, or external) via API and low-code technology

Lighthouse also features pre-built UI templates to enable developers to issue design prototypes faster, and enhanced data security with data anonymization and sensitive data flagging.

“Commercial teams should be able to transform by making small but systemic changes that can be scaled rapidly without impacting on operational resilience or requiring millions of euros of investment,” Blidarus said. “Lighthouse is our latest step to empower our customers and their employees with better experiences, services and tools, enabled by new technology, to drive real change – rapidly.”

Founded in 2014 and making its Finovate debut two years ago at FinovateEurope, U.K.-based FintechOS serves more than 40 institutions in 20 markets across four continents. Last month, FintechOS announced that it had implemented a digital onboarding solution for Romania’s OTP Bank and, this spring, the company announced that it was working with Deloitte to support the digital transformation of another Romanian financial institution, CEC Bank. Bringing onboard a new CTO in August, FintechOS has raised $16 million in funding from investors including Gapminder VC and Earlybird Venture Capital.

Photo by Johannes Plenio from Pexels

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Trends Pulsing at FinovateWest

Trends Pulsing at FinovateWest
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateWest 2020

One of the most compelling aspects of Finovate conferences is that they help you keep up with the latest trends in the industry. And with changes happening at such a fast pace these days, there’s never been a more important time to stay informed.

Fortunately, we’ve done the hard work for you and picked out a few trends to keep your eye on at FinovateWest next week, November 23 through 25.

COVID aftermath

No, we’re not over the pandemic, but we are starting to see the effects of long-term economic consequences. You can expect to hear panelists and presenters discuss strategies to deal with the long term impacts of COVID across a range of subsectors.

Harnessing AI

Despite (or maybe because of) the turbulence brought on in 2020, AI remains a top trend. With companies more focused than ever on their digital strategy, it’s a good time to think about the benefits of incorporating AI into not only your core offering, but also your back office tools, customer experience, and more. At FinovateWest next week AI will be one of the top areas of discussion.

Customer experience

This is yet another trend heightened by the recent pandemic. With so much of the customer experience taking place in the digital realm, it can be difficult to craft the perfect offering for all users. Many of the conversations taking place at FinovateWest will center around the customer.

The discussion sessions will take place throughout the three-day event, which goes live at 9 am Pacific on November 23. The fully digital conference will host keynote speakers, expert panelists, and some of the hottest companies in fintech as they demo their newest technologies. We’ve also carved out plenty of time and space for you to network with your fellow attendees. There’s still time to book your ticket so don’t delay!

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AU10TIX to Power ID Verification for Uber Drivers

AU10TIX to Power ID Verification for Uber Drivers
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news

Global identity verification and authentication platform AU10TIX teamed up with ride sharing company Uber this week to make rides in certain areas a bit more safe.

Under a new program, Uber is requiring users in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile who pay for their ride in cash to scan an official identification such as their voting credentials, national ID, passport or driver’s license for verification.

“In the current business climate, more drivers and riders are wanting added reassurance for  cash payment options, and we want to give them that,” said AU10TIX active deputy chairman Ron Atzmon. “Working together with Uber, we are delivering on this with AU10TIX’s identity document verification technology that provides the reliability, efficiency and scalability required to help provide peace of mind.”

AU10TIX offers document verification, identity verification, KYC, and AML tools to firms in a range of industries. The company leverages deep learning-based image processing, biometric technology, and data, to offer an autonomous solution that increases risk assessors’ confidence to shut down fraud before it occurs.

This week’s news marks a continuation of an existing relationship between the two players. Uber and AU10TIX first teamed up last year and recently expanded their partnership to electric scooters and Uber Eats.

Hinting at what’s next, AU10TIX CEO Carey O’Connor Kolaja said, “We expect this launch to set the stage for us to expand into other countries where Uber is experiencing elevated demand for cash payments.”

Photo by Barna Bartis on Unsplash

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InterSystems on Navigating Data in the Fintech Landscape

InterSystems on Navigating Data in the Fintech Landscape
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateWest 2020, Speaker series

The topic of data is one that pulses throughout conversations in the fintech industry. No matter what sub-sector you’re working in, it’s likely you faced the challenge– or are facing the challenge– on how to manage, store, and interpret data of all types.

I recently spoke with Joe Lichtenberg, Director of Industry Marketing at InterSystems, one of our FinovateWest sponsors. During our conversation, Lichtenberg spoke about recent trends he is seeing within financial services, the technology that is driving those trends, and how data is playing a role.

Be sure to catch InterSystems’ keynote on Monday, November 23 at 2:15 pm Pacific time. In his discussion, Jeff Fried, Director of Product Management for InterSystems, will be detailing seven steps to implementing machine learning in financial services. Finovate Analyst David Penn highlighted Fried’s session earlier this fall in a post titled, Giving AI and Machine Learning the Business.

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Here’s Johnny! Socure Appoints Co-Founder Ayers as New CEO

Here’s Johnny! Socure Appoints Co-Founder Ayers as New CEO
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Socure

Say hello to Socure’s new CEO! Then again, you’ve probably already met.

Johnny Ayers, who co-founded the identity verification company with Sunil Madhu in 2012 and has since served as both Director of Business Development and Chief Product Officer for the New York-based firm, has been named CEO. Ayers will take over from Tom Thimot, who joined the company as CEO in the spring of 2018.

“I am extremely grateful to Tom for his commitment to expanding Socure, building the organization, and serving as a mentor over the past 2+ years,” Ayers said in a statement. “His leadership skills and wealth of experience in running technology companies have been extremely instrumental in building the phenomenal work culture and team here at Socure, while laying the groundwork for our next phase of growth.”

Socure grew significantly under Thimot’s leadership. In 2018, the company gained ISO certification for privacy and security controls, and launched its Aida (Authentic Identity Agent) bot to provide real-time validation and authentication of digital identities. Socure also forged partnerships with companies like workflow management specialist Alloy and digital banking services provider (and fellow Finovate alum) Q2. Socure was also the target of robust investment in the Thimot Era, securing $65 million in funding – more than half the company’s total capital – in the past two years alone.

“In my time as CEO, we together built a world class, diverse team, added hundreds of customers, and increased the company valuation significantly,” Thimot said in the company’s announcement. “I also had the privilege of spending a lot of time working with and mentoring Johnny. Now it is time to pass the baton. As the original co-founder, Johnny is poised to take Socure to the next level by offering the right products and penetrating the right markets so that Socure is truly built to last. I’m very excited to see what’s next.”

The leadership shift comes at an opportune time for Socure, with interest in digital identity security on the rise during the global health crisis. Socure’s predictive analytics platform leverages AI and machine learning to analyze trusted on- and offline data intelligence from a wide variety of sources – including email, phone, and Internet – to offer real-time identity verification. As Chief Product Officer, Ayers led innovation in Socure’s Socure ID+ platform, helping bring a trio of expansions – Intelligent KYC, DocV, and Sigma Synthetic Fraud – to the company’s flagship solution.

A Finovate alum since 2013, Socure now includes four of the top five U.S. banks, eight of the top ten credit card issuers, and more than 100 of the largest fintechs among its customers and partners. The company was named a “Cool Vendor” this year in the AI for Banking and Investments category by Gartner.

Photo by Monica Silvestre from Pexels

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Infinicept Secures Funding from Mastercard, MissionOG

Infinicept Secures Funding from Mastercard, MissionOG
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding, MasterCard

Another day, another opportunity for Mastercard to find itself in the fintech headlines. Last week, we highlighted a handful of Finovate alums that earned spots in Mastercard’s Start Path program. Then, yesterday, we covered news that the company had enhanced its Mastercard Track Business Payment Service to help modernize business payments. We also reported on Monday that Mastercard had earned the go-ahead from the U.S. Department of Justice to complete its big acquisition of data aggregation innovator Finicity.

Today’s Mastercard-related performance comes in more of a “Best Supporting” role as the company – along with VC firm MissionOG – announces an investment in payments facilitator-services provider Infinicept. The amount of the funding was not disclosed, but Infinicept’s co-CEO and co-founder Todd Ablowitz highlighted adding engineering talent and investments in product management and customer service as ways Infinicept plans to put the new capital to use. He also said that Infinicept is experiencing a 8x growth rate, as well.

“The opportunity in front of us is enormous, and we’re going to invest intelligently and aggressively to meet the needs of our customers,” added Deana Rich, co-founder and co-CEO of Infinicept. “Our customers need the ability to get payments up and running on their own terms, without having to do all the work themselves. While others try to lock-in customers with templated solutions, Infinicept puts software companies in control of their payments experience – and their payments future.”

Infinicept enables businesses to offer embedded payments to a wide variety of customers, including in health care management and hospitality. Infinicept’s platform offers software providers, financial institutions, marketplaces, and more a payments infrastructure that can help them generate payments revenue, onboard merchants faster, and improve the overall customer experience.

This week’s investment is the latest expression of a partnership between Mastercard and Infinicept that extends back to 2012. Infinicept is an alum of Mastercard’s Start Path accelerator, joining the program as part of the 2019 cohort. Infinicept’s first customers were Stripe and Shopify in 2011.

“Infinicept’s technology now supports acquirers and payment facilitators with the critical tools to help businesses around the world manage payments,” Mastercard EVP of Merchant Solutions and Partnerships Zahir Khoja said. “Mastercard’s technology and scale, with partners such as Infinicept, is helping our larger acquirer ecosystem support businesses around the world to accelerate growth, modernize transactions, and ensure businesses have the tools to succeed.”

Founded in 2011, Infinicept is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.

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Moven and Q2 Team Up on Bank-in-a-Box Initiative

Moven and Q2 Team Up on Bank-in-a-Box Initiative
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Moven, Q2

A turnkey digital bank-in-a-box that can be deployed in as little as 30 days? That’s the product of a new partnership announced this week between a pair of Finovate alums: data-driven financial wellness innovator Moven and digital banking services provider Q2.

“Working with Q2 allows banks of all sizes to accelerate their consumer facing digital offering,” Moven CEO and CRO Kesh Talwar explained. “Having a complete view of customer financial behavior, along with Moven’s data analytics, will increase contextual customer engagement. He added that better customer engagement will lead to “lower attrition rates, increased revenues and acquiring new customers digitally at a lower cost.”

Initially, the collaboration will focus on the integration of Moven’s data aggregation and savings tools with Q2’s cloud-based core processor, CorePro. This will enable them to offer banks and credit unions an instant deployment solution with real-time alerts and notifications, as well as account issuance for savings and demand deposits accounts. The offering also includes features such as instant external account verification, wishlist savings, and an emergency account.

“We are thrilled that Q2’s CorePro system was selected by Moven to power this initiative,” GM of Q2 BaaS Paul Walker said. “Now any bank can have its own Marcus or Chime in a matter of a few weeks.”

The partnership is the latest evidence of Moven’s shift toward leveraging its financial wellness and behavioral data technology and away from the direct to consumer / neobank model of years past. Fintech expert and advisor Bryan Clagett, who approached both Moven and Q2 over the summer to discuss compatibilities between the two firms, underscored the importance of this strategy. “Digital banking, as we know it, is evolving quickly,” he said “and bringing together fintechs organizations that have complementary competencies is key to the future of the financial services industry.”

Founded in 2011 and becoming a Finovate alum after its debut at FinovateEurope two years later, Moven announced a partnership with Saudi Arabia’s STC Pay this spring. The New York-based company has raised more than $47 million in funding, and includes TD Bank and SBI Group among its investors. Brett King is founder and executive chairman. In a statement, King highlighted the significance of his company’s partnership with fellow Finovate alum, Q2.

“We started as a challenger bank in the U.S. market before collaborating with banks and FIs around the world, so we understand what it takes in the post-COVID digital world to stand out,” King said. “The Q2 alliance is our first major core partnership in the U.S., and no doubt will set a steep benchmark for other providers in the space.”

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Q2 has become one of the leaders in the embedded finance movement, offering a range of digital financial solutions for consumers, business clients, and fellow fintechs. The company won a Best of Show award at FinovateFall in September for its Partner Marketplace, an app store that is integrated within the client’s digital banking platform.

Q2 is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker QTWO, and has a market capitalization of more than $5 billion. See them next week as the company returns to the Finovate stage to demo its latest technology at FinovateWest Digital.

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels

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Chase Launches its Own BNPL Tool

Chase Launches its Own BNPL Tool
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Chase Bank, Daily news

If you’ve started online shopping for the holiday season you’ve likely seen buy now, pay later (BNPL) offerings at the checkout. And starting today, Chase cardholders have even more options to pay over time.

That’s because Chase is launching My Chase Plan, a BNPL option available to Chase credit cardholders. The new tool allows users to select a purchase of $100 or more they’ve made within the last 90 days and choose a payment duration ranging from three to 18 months.

Cardholders will not be charged interest on the purchase but they will face a monthly fee for using the service. Chase doesn’t list a range for the fee but the bank does disclose that the fee is based on the amount of the transaction selected, the number of billing periods, and “other factors.” In the example on Chase’s website, a purchase of around $587 split into six month increments incurs a monthly fee of $2.35.

“We developed My Chase Plan to provide our cardmembers with more flexibility and control of their payment options,” said Chase Card Services General Manager of Lending and Pricing Anthony Cirri. “We are thrilled to offer My Chase Plan as a tool to help cardmembers make the most of their money and pay for their purchases over time. With the holidays fast approaching, this embedded card feature can be used to pay off gifts and everyday purchases alike.”

From a business model perspective, Chase is taking a different approach than traditional BNPL players. Most BNPL companies work through merchant partners, charging the retailer a fee for each customer that makes a purchase using the BNPL technology. This offers a large incentive to the customer, since they receive more flexible purchase terms for free. Chase is coming at the equation from the other side, targeting the customer after they’ve made the purchase and charging them instead of the merchant.

Chase’s new feature is reminiscent of U.K.-based Curve’s tool that allows users to “go back in time” and switch their purchase from card-to-card. While Curve doesn’t enable users to pay over time, it does help with users who may have paid with the wrong card or need to free up some cash on a debit card by shifting a purchase to a credit card.

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

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What Ant Group Tells Us about Being Too Big to Fail

What Ant Group Tells Us about Being Too Big to Fail
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Julie's Column

When is BigTech too Big? Ant Group may have the answer to that.

After anticipating its IPO and setting share prices in late October, the China-based tech giant’s plans were put on hold when Chinese regulators suspended the IPO.

At $34.5 billion, Ant’s IPO would have been the largest public offering to-date, surpassing the previous highest IPO set when oil company Saudi Aramco went public at $29.4 billion earlier this year.

So what is China’s qualm with a successful tech giant going public? The answer may lie in fintech’s favorite four-letter word: data. That’s because big fintechs such as Ant rely on data traditionally held by the Chinese government such as salary and debt levels to provide lending or credit services. Overall, the communist party is worried about losing centralized control by giving a large tech company control over valuable data.

Some also speculate that the suspended IPO was directed at Jack Ma, Ant Group’s controlling shareholder and founder of tech giant Alibaba, as a way to humble him. Just before the IPO was suspended, Ma had given a speech at a conference in which he criticized regulators and Chinese banks.

“What happened to Ant reinforces that sense that it’s really essential to show respect for party-state authority,” said Kellee S. Tsai, the dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology told the New York Times. “Capitalists have to play by the political rules of the game.”

It’s a stark contrast to the scene in the U.S., where the economy relies so heavily on large companies in key industries that the government is willing to shell out millions to bail them out. In either situation, however, Ant Group’s recent predicament has taught us that it’s important to remember who’s boss.

Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash

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