(Yicai Global) May 27 -- Ant Financial hopes to work with 1,000 financial institutes over the next two years so that the Alibaba fintech affiliate can provide its services to 30 million small and micro-sized merchants, said Huang Hao, president for digital finance, at the Tsinghua PBCSF Global Finance Forum in Beijing over the weekend.

The company has partnered with 400 financial institutes to date, Huang said, adding that the Hangzhou-based firm's MyBank has worked with various creditors in control risks for each loan, so the non-performing ratio is very low at about 1 percent. 

Ant Financial has lived up to its "310 principle," meaning that the firm takes three minutes to accept a loan application and one minute to provide it with zero human intervention, said Huang, adding that such efficiency could become a national or even global standard.

The sector's current achievements are replacing traditional networks with the internet, he said. Genuine artificial intelligence-based businesses are just the beginning and the line between traditional financial institutes and emerging fintech firms will blur before eventually vanishing, he added.

Editor: William Clegg