Alibaba Affiliate to Expand Blockchain Charity Project

Ant Financial, the payments affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba, is moving to expand the scope of its blockchain-powered charity project.

The project – spearheaded by Ant Financial's charity arm, Ant Love – was first unveiled last summer. At the time, the company said that it was tapping the tech in order to "bring more transparency to charity". Specifically, the platform is designed to enable greater visibility into donor histories, charity disclosures, and other kinds of information involved with such efforts.

Ant Financial CTO Cheng Li told Bloomberg at the time:

"We hope to bring more transparency to charity and blockchain technology’s decentralized nature fits that purpose well. It means that all the information and transaction history of funds will be more reliable and can’t be easily tampered with."

Now, the firm is said to be looking to grow the initiative.

According to the South China Morning Post, Ant Financial is planning to involve more companies with the platform, including donor organizations, charities and media groups.

The project is a notable one given the scope of Alipay (Alibaba's payment service), which boasted more than 450m users as of last year, as well as the global footprint of Alibaba itself.

Earlier this month, Alibaba announced that it was working with professional services firm PwC on a blockchain project tied to preventing fraud in food supply chains.

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