Alibaba's Ant Financial opens cloud services

Alibaba Group's financial arm, Ant Financial, announced the start of its financial cloud services Friday.

Similar to Alibaba's cloud computing service provider Aliyun, Ant Financial Cloud connects 5,000 devices into one cluster base on its cloud server. Financial institutions can now purchase services according to their own needs using Alibaba's cloud system, saving all the trouble of setting up a system by themselves. This will have an important impact on small to medium sized financial institutions.

Jing Xiandong, president of Ant Financial, said that Ant Financial Cloud is an important part of the company's "Internet booster" plan. Jiang says it will serve as an important platform for technologies being open to financial institutions.

"What we have done is not to let a small ant grow into an elephant, but rather to help more participants in this eco-system better develop," Jiang said.

Within one year of its establishment, Ant Financial has worked closely with banks, investors, and insurance companies. It came up with the "Internet booster" plan last month. The company aims to help 1,000 financial institutions upgrade their financial system.

Ant Financial opened its private bank, MYBank, in June. In less than four months, the online lender has provided loans to more than 180,000 micro- and small-sized enterprises. Jing predicted that this number will reach 500,000 by the end of this year.