Recently, Ant Financial, the payments affiliate of Alibaba , acquired EyeVerify, a Missouri based start-up which uses biometric authentication technology for securing consumer’s online data and transactions. This is Ant Financial’s first investment in the U.S. and the company plans to use EyeVerify’s technology to upgrade its own security systems and integrate this technology in several of its products. Alibaba’s payment gateway Alipay is the most important offering of Ant Financial and has nearly 450 million active users, dominating the Chinese payment market. While global expansion has been on Alibaba’s agenda for some time, introducing a product in the U.S. requires not only a better understanding of the market, but the achievement of the quality, security and service standards expected by U.S. consumers. We believe that, as Alipay expands beyond China into regions such as India and Europe (for Chinese tourists), better security features can lead to faster adaption of this product. Once the company establishes trust in regions outside China, Alibaba can eventually look at launching a product in the U.S.

from Forbes – Tech http://ift.tt/2cKNyCr
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