Alipay China Changes Legal Representative and Chairman

Chinese media outlet Jiemian News reported on August 1 that the legal representative and chairman of Alipay (China) Network Technology Co., Ltd. has changed from Eric Jing, Ant Group’s chairman and CEO, to Ni Xingjun, Ant Group’s CTO. According to informed sources, Alipay submitted an application for the change to the industrial and commercial department, which granted approval.

Ni Xingjun joined Alibaba Group in 2003. He is a core member of Alipay’s founding team and a senior VP and chief technology officer of Ant Group. Previously, Ni worked as a programmer, product architect, and technical leader of industry products, and participated in the planning of Alipay’s technical architecture for various generations.

Alibaba Group’s FY2022 annual report indicates that certain Ant Group executives, including Eric Jing, Ni Xingjun, Zeng Songbai and Peng Yijie, no longer serve as Alibaba partners.

SEE ALSO: Alibaba Removes All Ant Executives from Partnership in First Step to Separation

Alipay (China) Network Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2004. It is the licensed entity for Alipay payment, and is registered in Shanghai with over 50% of technical developers. In terms of business, the company opens its payment technology to merchant organizations and provides acquiring services, currently serving 80 million merchants and 1 billion consumers.

Some people familiar with the matter previously told chinastarmarket.cn that Ant Group has two core businesses related to Alipay. First, the payment business sector, which started in 2004 and was similar to WeChat’s Tenpay; and second, the digital interconnection sector (Alipay app) established in 2016. These two sectors belong to two companies in Shanghai and Hangzhou respectively.

Previously, Alipay (Hangzhou) Information Technology Co., Ltd., the main company of the Alipay app, also changed its board members, senior management and supervisors. Li Juan, the head of the Alipay app, serves as the general manager.

On July 21, Alipay held the “2022 Alipay Partner Conference,” and showed the digital self-operation model of Alipay merchants for the first time. As the new executives of Alipay’s two main companies are settled, their business models of payment technology and digital interconnection are progressively coming to light.