Luup Blog

Bigbasket is a grocery startup which has grown to be the largest online supermarket in India. They recently raised $280 million in a funding round, $200 million of which was from Alibaba who now owns a 25% stake in the company.

Reports suggest that this investment will be a top up to the $45 million raised by venture capitalists in a Series C funding round in 2017.

Ofo is a bike sharing company in China, and it has recently raised $1 billion from Alibaba and other investors in a funding round.

It has been reported that China’s banks lending reached a record high in November 2017, vastly surpassing analyst expectations!

Over the last year, the government has been implementing new cyber rules and regulating internet activity. They insist that....

The Chinese government may have cracked down on bitcoin trading in the country, but this hasn’t deterred many investors desperate for a slice of the bitcoin pie.

Didi Chuxing is the most popular ride sharing app in China, with backing from the likes of Alibaba, Tencent and Apple. Now it is set to expand globally.

eCommerce in China accounts for a much bigger segment of GDP, and controls a much larger chunk of consumer spending than in Europe or the USA. Aside from consumer ecommerce, buying online is becoming much more commonplace in the B2B space.

Since 2012, the growth rate of transactions on China’s ecommerce websites was an annual 34%. It has grown from 8.1 trillion RMB in 2012 to 26.1 trillion RMB in 2017. During this 5 year period, the number of consumers who shop online has grown from 240 million almost 500 million. Online retail trade grew by an average of 40% each year, reaching nearly 5.2 trillion RMB in 2017 from 1.3 trillion RMB in 2012. The number of people employed directly & indirectly by the ecommerce sector has risen from 15 million to 37 million.

In the first 3 quarters on 2017, the GDP of China was 59,328.8 billion RMB. This shows a YoY increase of 6.9% at comparable prices and an 0.2% faster growth rate than the same period of 2016.

China is one of the most connected countries on the planet, having been highly disconnected just a few years ago. Due to it’s size and enormous population, it’s ecommerce and efinance companies are some of the biggest in the world. China now has the largest number of internet users in a country at over 700 million. Their consumption online is also the 2nd highest in the world at $967 billion USD in 2016. Ahead of China in terms of online spending was the USA, at $1.13 trillion USD.

Content generators in the US tend to monetise their viewers and followers through advertising on platforms such as Youtube. But in China, the per-per-view and pay-to-subscribe models are very common ways of monetising your followers. Consumers in China are much less averse to paying for content than their American counterparts. This has paved the way for a new content sharing model:

China came into its digital era with a very limited credit & debit card infrastructure. Due to this, it step straight from cash into digital payments. Electronic and digital payment methods have become the payment method of choice for Chinese consumers, whether they are purchasing online or offline.

If current trends continue, Asia is set to overtake the US for the largest concentration of billionaire wealth by 2021. A study by UBS has revealed that a new billionaire is created every 2nd day in Asia.

Amir Hossein Davaee is the Deputy Minister of Information & Communication technology in for the Iranian government. During an interview with Shargh, the Farsi newspaper, Davaee has stated that “The ministry of communications and information technology has already conducted a number of research studies as part of efforts to prepare the infrastructure to use Bitcoin inside the country.

The number of internet users in China has increased by 19.92 million since January this year, reaching a total of 751 million in July. 54.3% of the Chinese population are now internet users, up 1.1 percentage points since 2016 Those using internet on mobile has increased by 28.3 million since January, to reach 724 million by mid 2017. Non-exclusively, mobile internet users account for 96.3% of total internet users, up from 95.1 at the end of 2016.

In 2013, Asia Pacific ecommerce reached $535 billion USD. In 2013, it has been forecast to reach $1.3 trillion USD. This represents compound annual growth rate of 27% between 2013 and 2017.

Getting Around Town. Ride sharing & mobile taxi services saw their user base rise to 278 million. Limousine booking services saw their user base rise to 217 million. Bicycle rental services saw their user base rise to 106 million

Thankfully there are many products that can be sent directly to China for crossborder ecommerce, and you can see the full list here. The list includes clothes, milk products, food, clothing, furniture and more.

Paypal is going head to head with Paytm (who are backed by Alibaba) by launching domestic operations in India. Anupam Pahuja is the managing director of Paypal India. He told that “India is transitioning away from our biggest competitor – cash – and our digital platform and technology has immense scope to enable this at scale”. It appears that India has huge potential for growth in the sector, and this is just the beginning.

In this globalised world, more and more businesses are connecting with foreign suppliers. International B2B payments via wire transfer should be simple, but the reality is that it's not so easy.

Golden Week is a bi-annual national holiday in China that lasts 7 days.It occurs in January or February, to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year, and then again on the 1st of October to celebrate National Day. During Golden Week, Alibaba saw a big surge of in-store transactions overseas compared to last year. In fact, Alibaba’s Chinese users made 8x more overseas instore transactions in 2017 than 2016. According to Alibaba, Asian countries are the most popular tourist destinations for Chinese travellers, according to transaction volumes.

Cash is rapidly becoming obsolete in China. What could possibly replace it? QR code based mobile payment solutions, like those run by Alipay-Alibaba and WeChat-Tencent.

Tencent has a $407.1 billion market cap. It’s employee total is over 30,000. They are based in Shenzhen, in an area known as China’s Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1998 by a group including technologist Pony Ma, who is still the CEO today.

It has been neither confirmed nor denyed by the HK monetary authorities, but it has been reported by the South China Morning Post that ATM’s in Hong Kong have been hit with an extreme surge in withdrawals by customers with CUP cards.

With over 963 million active users, WeChat is the most popular social network in China. The platform encompasses messaging, social networking, plus an e-wallet and even more. It is a true lifestyle platform in China, and it is estimated that the app accounts for almost 30% of mobile usage in the country.

KLM is officially the first airline outside of China to allow customers to buy tickets via it’s website through WeChat pay, or directly through the WeChat app.

As of June 2017, China has 1.36bn mobile phone users. This number has grown by 42.74 million since January, according to official data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Until now, all bank card clearing in China had to go through CUP. This has been the way since June 2015, when China first opened up its market to foreign card payment companies.

Tencent has announced that it is set to ramp up its investment levels in AI, cloud services and online payments.

Some think of an e-wallet as the digital equivalent to the traditional leather wallet, where all you plastic cards are stored. Others think of an e-wallet as a stored value account for a digital currency, which requires a licence. In this article, we refer to e-wallets as an app or software used by consumers to store the credentials of their:

Mobile payment firms like Tencent & Ant Financial in China will soon have to share transaction data with their competitors. This comes as the People's Bank of China set up a new central clearing house, Wang'Lian that such firms will be forced to use.

What is a QR code? Invented in 1994, a Quick Response code is a 2D barcode that can be read by smartphones. It allows over 4000 characters to be encrypted in barcode form vertically & horzontally, which can then be scanned by a smartphone to display text, open a url, or make a payment. Scanning a code gives the user immediate access to the content held within.

In a bid to convert shoppers in Japan from cash to mobile payments. Alibaba will be introducing an Alipay platform to the country early next year. Ant Financial Services, the financial department of Alibaba, is working on tailoring the platform for the Japanese market.

Louis Vuitton was founded in Paris, France in 1854. It began with lightweight canvas trunks that were airtight and could be easily stacked. This easy stacking made them perfect for voyages, and also made them a roaring success. When Louis died in 1892, the business was passed on to his son Georges.

Technology is already changing our lives in ways the no one ever predicted to be possible. New software and hardware is being created every day, and it’s causing real distruption to traditional industries.

Cashless Week in China runs from August 1st to August 8th. During this time, Alipay will encourage Chinese citizens to participate in “cashless city construction”.

Every year, more Chinese tourists are travelling abroad as their economy grows and their amount of disposable income rises. Here's how they are spending that money.

WeChat Pay has announced the launch of it’s open platform for overseas merchants. The announcement came in Tokyo in July at the WeChat Pay Overseas Open Conference

In Japan in the early 2000s, their ultraadvanced flip phones allowed users to do everything from watch TV to paying at most stores. But because the phones were so advanced, Japan was slow to adopt smartphones.

Thailand is a densely populated country with a population of around 66 million people. Political instability has damaged economic growth of the country in the last few years. Two-thirds of the GDP co

ACI Worldwide, a real-time electronic payment provider, and Planet Payment, who process multi-currency & international payments have come together to launch UnionPay International’s SecurePlus.

Nowadays, ewallets like AliPay and WeChat reign. In the west, consumers are only just starting to get comfortable with using ewallets in brick and mortar shops, rather than just online. Meanwhile in China, a store clerk will ask if you want to pay with Alipay or WeChat, with cash being a third and almost redundant option. In 2016, the value of smartphone payments in China hit $5.5 trillion

Across the globe, the retail industry is going digital.More and more consumers are turning to their laptops and smartphones when they want to make a purchase. Merchants are constantly searching for new ways to meld together the physical and the digital world. China in particular is experiencing huge growth in ecommerce

UnionPay is not holding back on international expansion. In recent years, UnionPay has upped innovation significantly, developing lots of new products that can be used for crossborder transactions. These include a digital wallet, a crossborder B2B platform and even a crossborder marketing platform called UPlan.

China has the largest population in the world with over 1.3 billion people, and one of the fastest growing economies. This is due to its high productivity levels, the low cost of labour and the moderately developed infrastructure. It is the world’s leading manufacturer and exporter of goods. China’s political and economic reforms have brought about a large middle class and an urbanised population. Consequently, this has created many business opportunities for both local and international investors.

This is the practice of patients travelling to a foreign country for the purpose of receiving medical treatment. Many wealthy Chinese citizens are now venturing abroad in order to gain access to the healthcare they need. In years gone by, medical tourism mainly consisted of western consumers seeking cosmetic procedures at a lower price. However in 2016, 500,000 Chinese citizens travelled for medical care regardless of the higher prices than at home.

The use of WeChat Pay skyrocketed when Tencent introduced the Red Envelopes function. Traditionally filled with cash and given as gifts to loved ones during the Chinese New Year festival, WeChat gave red envelopes a 21st century twist.

PayTM has grown rapidly due to the demonetisation of the India economy in late 2016. 98% of transactions in India were cash based before the policy was introduced that removed 86% of cash from the economy. Every 500 and 1000 rupee note was removed from circulation, and huge lines were seen across the country at banks when citizens had just a few weeks to deposit their cash before it was rendered valueless.

Today marks the start of London Fintech Week 2017. Here’s our round up of the top events each day if you could only choose one.

Towards the end of 2016, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi eradicated 86% of cash in circulation in the country in an effort to demonetise the economy and drive India towards becoming a cashless society. To do this, he removed the 500 and 1000 rupee notes from circulation.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has met with Monetary Authority of Macau (AMCM) and representatives of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).

Mobile payments in China in 2016 accounted for over half of it’s total GDP, reaching a record $5.5 trillion worth of transactions.