蚂蚁金服日活用户一年翻番
阿里巴巴(Alibaba)的支付业务关联公司蚂蚁金服(Ant Financial)表示，其日活用户人数在截至3月底的一年里翻了一倍。
Much of the growth came in the first quarter of this year, with numbers up 40 per cent on the previous quarter, according to Ant Financial.
根据蚂蚁金服的说法，这一增长的很大一部分来自今年第一季度，该季度用户数比前一季度增加40%。
Alibaba, which reports results today, has a profit-sharing agreement under which it takes 37.5 per cent of Ant’s pre-tax profits.
今天将公布财报的阿里巴巴，与蚂蚁金服签有盈利分享协议。根据协议，阿里巴巴会拿走蚂蚁金服37.5%的税前盈利。
Ant does not disclose the number of active daily users of its Alipay service, but says it has a total of 450m people using its payments and other financial services, including wealth management and insurance. 蚂蚁金服并未披露其支付宝(Alipay)服务的日活用户人数，而是表示总计有4.5亿人使用其支付和其他金融服务，包括理财和保险。
The rate of user growth, hitherto undisclosed, comes as competition is heating up in China’s $5.5tn mobile payments market — the world’s biggest and 50 times the size of the US market.
此前未曾披露的用户数增速数据出炉之际，在中国5.5万亿美元规模的移动支付市场，竞争正在不断升温。中国移动支付市场的规模为全球最大，是美国市场规模的50倍。
Ant had long dominated the market with Alipay, launched in 2004 as a PayPal-type service to facilitate payment on Alibaba’s ecommerce platforms.
长期以来，蚂蚁金服通过支付宝主导着该市场。支付宝于2004年推出，当时是一个类似PayPal的服务，用于帮助完成阿里巴巴电商平台上的支付活动。
But Tencent — one of China’s dominant internet trinity (along with Alibaba and Baidu, collectively known as BAT) has made rapid strides in the past year. Tencent’s WeixinPay now boasts a 37 per cent market share to Alipay’s 54 per cent, based on fourth-quarter data.
然而，腾讯(Tencent)在过去一年里取得了长足的进步。根据第四季度的数据，腾讯的微信支付(WeixinPay)目前拥有37%的市场份额，而支付宝则占54%的市场份额。腾讯是中国占统治地位的互联网三驾马车之一，另外两家企业分别是阿里巴巴和百度，三者合称BAT。
Tencent has been rapidly signing up physical stores: Starbucks this week said 29 per cent of all sales at its 2,628 cafés in mainland China are now paid for with WeixinPay.
腾讯一直在迅速签下实体店：就在本周，星巴克(Starbucks)表示，其在中国内地的全部2628家咖啡厅的全部销售中，29%是用微信支付的。
Ant has fought back, likewise signing up physical retailers. Earlier this month it agreed a partnership with First Data that gives it access to a potential 4.5m merchants in the US. It has a similar arrangement in Europe with Ingenico and BNP.
蚂蚁金服发起了还击，同样签下了实体零售商。这个月早些时候，该公司与First Data达成了合作，为它打开美国450万潜在商家的大门。在欧洲，蚂蚁金服也与Ingenico及法国巴黎银行(BNP Paribas)达成了类似安排。
Cyril Han, vice-president of Ant Financial, said Ant is focusing on building its technology, shifting “from fintech to techfin”, meaning it wants to prioritise providing the tech platform for financial services over the services themselves.
蚂蚁金服副总裁韩歆毅(Cyril Han)表示，该公司正聚焦于打造自身的技术，“从金融科技转向科技金融”，这意味着蚂蚁金服希望把为金融服务提供技术平台摆在比服务本身更优先的地位。
Markets had been banking on an initial public offering from Ant — valued at $60bn at its last funding round in 2016 — proving to be the highlight of this year’s calendar, but the listing is off the agenda until at least the end of next year, the Financial Times reported this week.
市场原本一直寄希望于蚂蚁金服的首次公开招股(IPO)会成为今年日历中的亮点。然而，据英国《金融时报》本周报道，至少在明年底以前，上市将不在其议程内。在2016年进行的上一轮募资过程中，蚂蚁金服的估值达到600亿美元。
