Ant International Secures $1.2 Billion to Scale Global Fintech

The fresh liquidity will bolster the company’s efforts to scale its four primary business units: the Alipay+ network, the Antom merchant platform, the WorldFirst financial service, and its AI-focused treasury product line, Bettr. By prioritizing these segments, the firm aims to deepen its reach across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, where it currently connects over 150 million merchants to a base of 2 billion consumer accounts.

This financing follows a period of robust growth, with the unit reporting approximately $3.7 billion in revenue for 2025—a 25% year-over-year increase. Beyond traditional payments, the company is betting heavily on tokenization and stablecoin technology. Having already integrated Circle’s USDC for settlement trials, the firm is now preparing to seek stablecoin issuer licenses in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Luxembourg. With over $1 trillion in total transaction volume processed in 2024, the company is leveraging its proprietary Whale blockchain platform to shift more of its settlement volume away from legacy correspondent banking systems.