Ant Financial, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's financial arm, announced to raise its bid to 18 U.S. dollars per share for the acquisition of U.S. money transfer company MoneyGram, up 36% from its first bid and the deal value is to reach 1.204 billion U.S. dollars.

It is noticed that an acquisition agreement valuing 880 million U.S. dollars has been reached between two companies on 26th January, with the offer of 13.25 U.S. dollars per share.

This is not the first step for Ant Financial in the overseas market. It offers two runs of investment for Indian Paytm in 2015 and invested Ascend Money providing technology and experience. Also in February 2017, Ant Financial started to collaborate with Korean Internet giant Kakao.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn