China’s e-commerce powerhouses have spent the holiday season locking down some serious funding for their finance arms.
JD.com announced a 6.65 billion yuan (about $1 billion USD) funding injection into their finance subsidiary, JD Finance, on Saturday. The latest round values the entity at 46.65 billion yuan ($7 billion USD), according to a release from the company.
The funding was led by top investors Sequoia Capital, China Harvest Investments and China Taiping Insurance, according to JD.
“With our top risk management technology and the additional expertise from our investors and partners, we look forward to significantly expanding JD Finance’s service offerings and market reach,” said JD CEO Richard Liu in a statement.
It follows an announcement earlier this month from Alibaba’s finance arm Ant Financial, who revealed they had officially begun a second round of funding. Ant Financial operates Alipay, the hugely popular payment service boasting over 400 million users.
China’s e-commerce players have been amassing scores of consumer-facing finance products in the past 18 months, and new funding between the country’s two top rivals, Alibaba and JD.com, signals the trend will continue in 2016.
Tencent, the social and gaming giant behind WeChat, is also rumored to be seeking fresh funds north of $1 billion USD for their online-banking arm WeBank. Tencent is also a backer of JD.com.
JD.com noted in the release that they would maintain majority ownership of JD Finance in the wake the latest funding round.