Heard on the Street: A tougher regulatory approach—and probably slower growth—now look inevitable for Ant Group
of e-commerce giant Alibaba , another company in Mr. Ma’s empire, last month.
Investors took Mr. Ma’s reappearance as an auspicious sign—Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares jumped 8.5% Wednesday. They may have inferred that Mr. Ma is now back in Beijing’s good graces and the regulatory storm will be over. But there doesn’t seem to be a letup: on the same day Mr. Ma made his public appearance, China’s central bank released draft rules governing nonbank payment systems, in which Ant’s Alipay is a major player.
There are still uncertainties about what some of the draft rules mean. The rules, for example, say if two players have more than half of the nonbank payment markets—Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay dominate China’s mobile and internet payments—then the central bank would hold talks with the companies. It’s unclear what the exact consequences or remedies would be after such warnings, though.