(ECNS) -- Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial announced on Monday that it got approval from the South Korean government for an e-bank joint venture in the country.
The K-Bank project has 20 shareholders including South Korea Telecom. Ant Financial is the only Chinese stake owner.
K-Bank is allowed to provide all banking services including deposits, loans, credit cards, financing and foreign exchange in South Korea. Cutting-edge technologies like cloud computing and big data will be employed to better serve customers.
K-Bank is another celebration for Ant Financial after Paytm, an Indian payment service it invested in, obtained the first Payment Bank license in India.
Ant Financial CEO Jing Xiandong said the company hopes to export its experience in serving Chinese small and medium companies to the global market.
Ant Financial is Alibaba's online payment service backed by Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group, one of China's first private banks based completely on in cyberspace. The e-bank boasted a reserve of 5.2 billion yuan by the end of November and has served 430 thousand Chinese small businesses.
