Ant International Eyes $1 Billion Funding and Hong Kong Listing as It Rebounds from Ant Group’s Fall

Fundraising at a $10B target

The capital raise, first reported by Bloomberg on June 10, 2026, is structured to draw between $750 million and $1 billion from a mix of existing and new investors, according to people familiar with the matter . General Atlantic and Silver Lake — both Ant Group veterans — have been approached, alongside a broader set of prospective backers. The targeted valuation of $10 billion would make Ant International one of the most valuable private fintech units straddling traditional payments and the emerging digital-asset economy .

Ant International has posted eight consecutive quarters of profitability, according to FinanceFeeds , and was projected to generate roughly $3.75 billion in revenue in 2025 after seeing about 25% year-over-year growth . The new funds are earmarked for building AI-powered digital commerce tools, deepening its wallet partnerships, and entering new markets such as the Middle East and Latin America .

While the fundraise is actively being shopped, people familiar with the discussions stress that no final decisions have been made and the company is not guaranteed to proceed on its current terms .

Three core businesses driving the growth story

Ant International’s growth thesis rests on three interconnected businesses:

• Alipay+ — a unified cross-border wallet gateway that connects over 1.8 billion consumer accounts across 40 wallet partners to more than 150 million merchants in over 100 markets . For merchants, Alipay+ offers a single integration point to accept dozens of foreign payment apps, eliminating the need for bilateral deals .
• Antom — merchant-focused payment orchestration and digital commerce services. The platform serves over 50 million merchants globally, predominantly small and medium businesses, processing online, in-store, and cross-border payments . Antom’s total payment volume nearly doubled in 2024, and card-processing volume grew tenfold year-over-year .
• WorldFirst — a global business account service for SMEs. As of mid-2025, WorldFirst had served over 1.2 million businesses, with cumulative transaction volume exceeding $300 billion . It offers multi-currency accounts, trade finance, and cross-border payout capabilities — a playbook Ant is replicating across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and now Latin America.

2025 transaction volume and global scale

Ant International says it supported more than 2 billion digital cross-border transactions in 2025 across its core emerging markets — Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America . The platform processes an average of over 20 million transactions daily and supports more than 300 payment methods, including over 10 national QR schemes and 50 digital wallet and bank apps .

Much of that volume runs through Alipay+, which has become a digital payments rail for tourism-driven economies: in Malaysia, over 80% of inbound QR payments via the national DuitNow scheme were made through Alipay+ .

Latin America push and the Mastercard tap-to-pay partnership

In May 2026, Ant International took a concrete step into Latin America by partnering with regional fintech PVS to enable QR-based cross-border mobile payments for international travelers in Chile and Argentina, with plans for broader regional rollout . The integration lets users of Alipay+-partner wallets pay at participating PVS merchants without downloading new apps or carrying foreign cash.

Simultaneously, the company’s partnership with Mastercard is bridging QR and NFC ecosystems. Alipay+ wallet users can now tap to pay at over 150 million Mastercard contactless terminals worldwide, a crucial capability for markets where QR penetration is high but NFC terminals dominate in-store retail .

Stablecoin ambitions in Hong Kong and beyond

Ant International is pursuing stablecoin issuer licenses in multiple jurisdictions, betting that regulated fiat-referenced tokens will become a core settlement layer for cross-border commerce.

In June 2025, the company announced it would apply for a stablecoin license in Hong Kong under the city’s new Stablecoins Ordinance, which took effect August 1, 2025 . It is also exploring permits in Singapore and Luxembourg . Hong Kong’s Monetary Authority issued its first batch of stablecoin licenses in April 2026 to HSBC and Standard Chartered; Ant International has not yet received a license but remains among the prominent applicants .

The stablecoin push aligns with the company’s long-standing view that real-time, programmable money — rather than traditional correspondent banking — is the natural settlement mechanism for a network moving billions of cross-border transactions annually.

The Hong Kong IPO: no timetable but clear intent

A Hong Kong IPO for Ant International has been an open topic since at least May 2025, when Reuters reported that Ant Group was planning to list its overseas unit . Those reports pegged a possible valuation range between $8 billion and $24 billion .

The $1 billion pre-IPO round being discussed in mid-2026 is clearly designed to set a valuation benchmark and expand the investor base before a public filing. Multiple sources describe the fundraising as a path toward a listing later this year, but all emphasize the absence of a firm timetable .

Hong Kong regulators have spent 2025 and early 2026 building out licensing frameworks for digital assets, including stablecoins, creating an environment that is arguably more welcoming than mainland China for a fintech with Ant International’s profile .

The ghost of 2020: Ant Group’s canceled mega-IPO

Any conversation about Ant International’s listing prospects is shadowed by what happened to its parent.

In October 2020, Ant Group was poised to raise $34.5 billion in a dual Shanghai–Hong Kong listing, which would have been the largest IPO in history . The offering garnered nearly $3 trillion in retail demand in mainland China alone . But on November 3, 2020 — days before trading was set to begin — Chinese regulators suspended the IPO, citing “major issues” and new rules targeting Ant’s lending business .

After more than two years of regulatory restructuring, Ant Group announced a surprise $6 billion share repurchase in July 2023, valuing the company at roughly $78.5 billion — approximately a 75% discount from the $315 billion valuation targeted in 2020 . The buyback gave trapped domestic and international investors a long-awaited exit, but also crystallized the staggering scale of value destruction from Beijing’s crackdown.

Ant International’s standalone push is, in effect, a test of whether a cleaner, globally oriented business can regain public-market credibility — even if the parent entity remains too encumbered by Chinese regulatory constraints to return to the public stage .

A successful $10 billion-plus fundraise and Hong Kong listing wouldn’t erase 2020’s fallout. But for Ant Group’s leadership — and the legacy investors who have waited half a decade for a path forward — it would be the most significant step yet toward rebuilding the franchise’s public-market narrative.