Hot on the heels of the Apple iPhone 6 launch event, Alibaba’s much anticipated IPO in the US stock market has most investors chomping at the bit waiting to get a piece of the action.
Stock pros have weighed in on the Alibaba IPO (NYSE:BABA) soundly in favor of a buy above $90 per share, and they definitely have much to be excited about; analysts are estimating stellar growth in both US and Asian markets for the online and e-commerce giant.
With deep political connections to the ruling party in China, Alibaba founder Jack Ma has the unique ability to leverage the commerce between the world’s dominating trading partners.
Rivaling the likes of Google Wallet, PayPal, and Apple Pay, Alibaba has their own mobile payments platform called Alipay Wallet.
Through a cross-technology venture with smart-phone maker Huawei, Alibaba has created a biometric measure of security into their platform by way of a thumb print reader.
They are not the first to try fingerprint scanning tech for security, but according to company insiders they believe that their integration of biometrics is an industry game-changer and will revolutionize how consumers view mobile payments security.
With 300 million users in China, Alibaba’s payment arm, Alipay, wields tremendous power, but will U.S. consumers be on the uptake?
According to Mark Ranta, Senior Solutions Consultant for ACI Worldwide, “The continued potential/expected growth for Alipay is enormous, especially considering there are no transaction fees for consumers. But, we still need to take a ‘wait & see’ approach in terms of when it hits the States and elsewhere outside of China. Many Western consumers will likely be tentative (at least initially) when it comes to using a Chinese payment engine due to the trepidation around their data—will it be vulnerable?”