EC Why Baidu Is Well-Positioned To Monetize FinTech In China

The competition among China’s three biggest tech-conglomerates Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), and Tencent (TCEHY) is increasing and expanding outside the traditional technology field. The three compete to dominate the Chinese market in software, Internet services, social media, and many more but, lately, started to step outside of their comfort zone and invest in adjacent markets. The competition among the three Chinese reached new highs when the three giants invested billions of dollars in supporting ride-hailing service providers, and now, they are moving into the financial services market.

Two months ago, in September, all the three companies invested large amounts of money in the evolving Chinese ride-hailing market. Baidu invested $1.2B in Uber to support its penetration into China, while Alibaba and Tencent merged their ride-hailing start-up to form Didi Kuaidi and to inject $3B into the new company. Alibaba and Tencent also invested another $200M in the U.S.-based app Lyft to increase its global ride-hailing presence and compete with Uber worldwide.

At the beginning of the year, Tencent opened the first Chinese private online-only bank called WeBank, a reference to the company’s popular instant messaging app WeChat. The new online-only bank was headquartered in Shenzhen, targeting individuals and small businesses. In June,Alibaba opened MYbank, targeting small and micro-enterprises in rural areas with no access to physical bank branches. Same as WeBank, MYbank will also be a fully digital financial institution with an online-only service “not for the rich, but for the little guys” said Eric Jing, president of Ant Financial — the Alibaba affiliate backing the bank.

Opening financial institutions became a feasible plan when the Chinese banking regular eased the existing loan-to-deposit ratio by allowing placements by non-bank financial institutions to count as deposits under the calculation. Offering financial service is an important milestone for the Chinese internet conglomerates in their efforts toward various FinTech solutions supported by their cloud and big data capabilities and powered by the massive computing infrastructure. These services include e-payment services for in-store and online payments, P2P transactions, and P2P loans. Some of these services have already been made available by the players, but no one has a strong FinTech offering backed by a banking institution that has a global presence. WeBank and MYbank are the first steps for Alibaba and Tencent to monetize that market.