Ant Financial has launched a Software-as-a-Service SaaS-version of its technology product OceanBase. The financial-grade distributed relational database that has been a key computing infrastructure for Alipay since 2010 is now available to market participants.
In October 2019, OceanBase was ranked number one in terms of performance by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), a global non-profit that defines transaction processing and database benchmarks. Ant Financial began to develop OceanBase by 2020 and finally replaced all legacy database solutions with this new financial-grade product in 2016.
OceanBase swiftly processed all transactional database requests during the 11.11 Global Shopping Festiva in 2019l, including at a peak of 61 million per second, which reached USD$38.4 billion in just 24 hours. This exceeded the total online retail sales of USD$24.6 billion generated during U.S. retail’s biggest shopping holidays in the same year, from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.
In September 2018, Ant Financial announced an initiative to open up a full suite of its technology products to support the growth of financial institutions, including China Construction Bank, Bank of Nanjing, PICC Health, Bank of Suzhou and Guangdong Rural Credit Union. These have already deployed OceanBase and now the SaaS solution will provide a more flexible and cost-effective option to small-and-medium enterprise customers and developers. To date, Ant Financial has provided more than 100 technology products and solutions to over 200 financial institutions.
Most recently, Vanguard Group, the USA based investment management service provider with assets worth more than US$5.3 trillion under management, partnered with Ant Financial to provide an investment advisory service in China. The joint venture which will provide a streamlined and broadly available investment advisory service to retail consumers in China as approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to Chinese individual investors.
Combining Alipay’s technology officer and Vanguard’s expertise in investment management and advisory service, the partnership will bring into reality a customized service for retail investors based on their investment objectives, time limitations, and risk preferences as long as the clients meet minimum investment requirements set at 800 RMB approximately USD 113. This service is expected to be made available to investors via the Alipay app.
One of the most well-known wealth management partnerships for Ant Financial to date is its deal with Yu’e Bao – popularly known as the spare cash management platform. Via its deal with Yu’e Bao, Ant Financial allows its clients who use Alipay app to purchase money market funds from the cash management platform.
