Ant Financial to establish joint venture in Malaysia

Malaysia's second-largest group, Touch'n Go Sdn Bhd, today announced they will provide mobile wallet and related financial services in partnership with Alipay's Ant Financial.

Touch'n Go Sdn Bhd (TNG) and Ant Financial on Monday signed an agreement in which TNG will be the majority shareholder, according to a joint statement today.

"The capital injected by both parties will go towards the creation of a world-class online and offline payments provider, delivering superior mobile wallet solutions and other related financial services," CIMB said in the statement.

Ant Financial has been teaming up and enabling local partners in India, South Korea and South-East Asia and has leveraged its technology capability to help overseas companies to provide digital payment and innovative financial services to local users.

“Given TNG’s leading position in the market and vast customer base, we believe that we can help it to offer exciting and innovative products to Malaysian consumers,” said Ant Financial chief executive officer Eric Jing.

Malaysia is the first country to join the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP), a scheme initiated by Alibaba Group executive chairman and founder Jack Ma to help small to medium-sized enterprises expand their trading capabilities worldwide through digital platforms.

ALIBABA Group signed a memorandum of understanding in May this year with Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), Malaysia’s digital economy development agency, and the Hangzhou Municipal Government to connect the first e-hubs in the two countries under the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP), initiated by the e-commerce giant.

The three parties agreed to work together to explore potential strategic collaborations and seek to enable the building of infrastructure for seamless cross-border e-commerce trade between Malaysia and China.