The industry was shaken when news images appeared showing Thai tycoon "Dhanin Chearavanont," Chairman and Senior Chairman of Charoen Pokphand Group,

joining hands with Chinese billionaire "Jack Ma" for cooperation in the "FinTech" business, a hot industry that has been widely discussed over the past year.

When figures like Dhanin and Jack Ma come in person, it is certainly no ordinary matter.

These days, the financial business and banks are being talked about a great deal. With advancing technology and growing acceptance of digital money, there is a strong possibility that banks may disappear in the near future.

By disappear, I do not mean that people will stop conducting financial transactions. Rather, the intermediaries handling those transactions may no longer be banks.

Financial transactions will be handled through intelligent systems capable of approving, depositing, withdrawing, transferring, lending, and purchasing quickly, safely, around the clock, across borders, and with almost no human involvement. Most importantly, the fees will be very low, or nearly zero.

The point is that such intelligent systems are unlikely to be built by banks themselves, because if banks built them, it would be like digging their own grave and driving themselves into ruin.

Most banks are very large organizations, so they do not dare do anything like that. Some may invest a little money into FinTech start-ups, but it is said that deep down, some banks invest mainly to monitor them and prevent those start-ups from disrupting their business too quickly or too easily—in other words, they invest only to buy themselves time.

So the question is: who will invest to make these intelligent systems happen?

Will it be small start-ups with clever technology? Personally, I do not think so. No matter how sophisticated the technology is, if there are no users, that is the end of it. Therefore, whoever builds such intelligent systems must not only have advanced technology, but also a massive user base and transaction volume. Only then can they truly disrupt the financial sector.

Now you can probably see why Dhanin himself came to this deal. Just think about how enormous the volume of transactions within CP Group companies is, and how beneficial it would be if all that money no longer had to pass through banks but could instead flow through a system they own themselves.

As for Jack Ma, his vision is probably not very different. Today Alibaba is a global e-commerce giant with an enormous volume of transactions and continued growth, following the behavior of people who increasingly shop online.

Beyond the huge number of shoppers using Alibaba’s system, there are also many merchants using Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms. This is likely what gave Jack Ma the vision to establish ANT FINANCIAL specifically for this purpose.

ANT FINANCIAL does not only provide Alipay. It also offers lending services, fund purchases, and many other services as a complete package.

Because merchants conduct business through Alibaba’s e-commerce system, Alibaba has full financial transaction data on all of them. It knows who sells well, who does not, who is wealthy, and who is poor. Combined with Big Data technology that can analyze each merchant’s financial status in depth, this becomes extremely powerful.

When any merchant faces a cash-flow shortage or cannot turn capital over in time, they can simply press a button to borrow money from Jack Ma within minutes, because the intelligent system has already analyzed the risk and decided whether lending is possible.

Anyone who has ever borrowed from a bank knows how painful it is. You have to show bank statements, fill out piles of documents, provide collateral, sign countless signatures, and wait for weeks—or sometimes months.

Compared with Jack Ma’s system, which takes only a few minutes and even charges lower interest, whom would you choose to borrow from?

And for merchants who are already wealthy, have plenty of cash, and no cash-flow issues, they should not leave money sitting idle, right? Jack Ma also has investment recommendation systems for buying funds, insurance, and more. In the near future, intelligent systems will even analyze where one should invest in order to achieve the highest return.

In fact, ANT FINANCIAL does not provide financial services only for merchants. Ordinary consumers can use it as well, because ANT FINANCIAL operates Alipay, which collects the financial data of all users.

ANT FINANCIAL has now already stepped into Thailand, and not in any ordinary way. It has entered by partnering with one of our country’s giant businesses. It will be very interesting to watch what its next moves will be, and whether Thailand’s banking industry will respond.

Now then, "Solbugtong" must go and follow up with the bank once again about that loan. When are they finally going to approve it... sob.