Ant Financial, the fintech arm of Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group, has launched the testing stage for its blockchain network aimed to support small and medium-sized businesses.

Speaking at the World Blockchain Summit at Wuzhen, China, Jieli Li, senior director of technology and business innovation at Ant Financial, said the tech underlying its Ant Blockchain Open Alliance is set to go live three months after the testing period, according to a report from Sina Finance.

“While the blockchain is open to developers and institutions from all over the world, we will be cautious in terms of selecting nodes on the platform,” Li stressed in an interview with 8btc.com.

The company will include educational and certification agencies as nodes to increase credibility of the network, and choose partners depending their industries rather than which regions they are based in, the exec explained. However, who those firms might be is not yet being disclosed.

“We can not disclose the names of our partners who participate in the consortium blockchain at this time,” Li said.

Ant Blockchain Open Alliance is aimed to cut costs and expand the reach of services in different industries, such as finance and healthcare, to a larger user base.

The company unveiled the project in September and has been adding partners to the consortium since. It's working on other blockchain projects too, including a food tracking app and a system for monitoring agri-products in partnership with Bayer.

Ant Financial image via CoinDesk Archive