HANGZHOU, China--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Ant Financial Services Group, parent company of Alipay, announced that its payments technology expert Ji Xu has been named to MIT Technology Review’s prestigious annual Innovators Under 35 list as an entrepreneur. For over a decade, the publication has recognized exceptionally talented technologists whose work has great potential to transform the world.
Xu joined Alipay in 2007, and in three years, became the chief architect of Alipay’s core payments platform, which later grew to be the world’s largest payments platform. Xu and his team developed technology that supports the processing of high-volume payment transactions. In 2017 on Singles’ Day, the world’s largest online shopping festival, Alipay’s payments system processed up to 256,000 transactions per second. Today, Xu is the CTO for Ant Financial’s International Business Unit, and he leads a team of hundreds of engineers, working closely with Ant Financial’s local partners in Southeast Asia and India, sharing Ant Financial’s technological capabilities that enable the development of a reliable and robust payments system. His team is helping local partners to provide more efficient, user-friendly and cost-effective digital financial services for their customers, increasing equal opportunity and access to financial services for more unbanked and under-banked individuals.
Born in Anhui Province, China, Xu dropped out of college but continued to pursue his passion for computer science and coding by taking classes on his own, teaching himself programming skills. Recalling his decision to join Alipay in 2007, Xu remarked, “I joined because I believed it was a place that values technology. I can learn from many technology experts, making a real impact on the lives of ordinary people.”
Learn more about this year’s honorees online here and in the July/August print edition of MIT Technology Review, available worldwide on July 3, 2018. Xu and other honorees have also been invited to attend the upcoming EmTech MIT conference, MIT Technology Review’s flagship event exploring future trends and technologies that will impact the global economy. The conference will be held from September 11-14, 2018 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
About Ant Financial
Ant Financial Services Group is dedicated to using technology to bring the world equal opportunities. Our technologies, including blockchain, artificial intelligence, security, Internet of Things and computing, empower us and our ecosystem partners to serve the unbanked and underbanked, bringing more secure, transparent, cost-effective and inclusive financial services to individuals and SMEs worldwide.
Ant Financial has formed international partnerships with global strategic partners to serve local users in those markets, and we serve Chinese travelers overseas by connecting Alipay with online and offline merchants in popular destinations. By the end of March 2018, together with its global JV partners, Ant Financial served 870 million users worldwide. Brands under Ant Financial Services Group include Alipay, Ant Fortune, Zhima Credit, MYbank and Ant Financial Cloud.
For more information on Ant Financial, please visit our website at www.antfin.com or follow us on Twitter @AntFinancial.
About MIT Technology Review
Founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1899, MIT Technology Review is a world-renowned, independent media company whose insight, analysis, reviews, interviews and live events explain the commercial, social and political impact of new technologies. MIT Technology Review derives its authority from the world's foremost technology institution and from its editors' deep technical knowledge, capacity to see technologies in their broadest context, and unequaled access to leading innovators and researchers. MIT Technology Review’s mission is to bring about better-informed and more conscious decisions about technology through authoritative, influential and trustworthy journalism. Subscribe. Follow: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram.
