Alibaba Finance, the financial arm of Alibaba Group, launched a Jubaopen, a service dedicated to help traditional banks that lack e-commerce and online payment technology supports to develop these businesses, according to Yuan Leiming, manager of Alibaba Microfinance Department.
Jubaopen is based on the computing ability of AliCloud, enabling banks to gain quick access to online payment systems which are developed by mature banking system developers. Alibaba only provides services for networks, security management, computing and analysis so as to lower the entering threshold of e-commerce for small- and medium-sized banks.
Currently cooperating with five banks, Jubaopen is in discussions with 20-30 banks to expand business. The project is focused on small- and medium-sized banks, because they bear much more economic pressures from early-stage equipment investments compared with large banks.
Cloud computing not only helps them to save hefty investments, but also guaranteed information processing ability paralleled or superior to that of big banks and helps them to fight the pressures during traffic peaks like the case during November 11, a Chinese holiday for singles, similar to Valentine’s Day when e-commerce companies competing to slash prices to attract more customers.
Chinese banking industry experienced swift development in recent years, chalking up more than 300 banks. The number still dwarfed by that of developed countries like the U.S., which has more than 8,000 banks. Alibaba has made inroads into banking industry a few years ago and the business developed rapidly, with bank partners increased from 2 in 2005 to 163 this year.