(Yicai) Feb. 6 -- Ant Group has named Liu Zheng, the former chief financial officer of Cainiao Smart Logistics Network, the courier unit of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, as the financial technology giant's new CFO.

Liu has joined Ant and will take over the CFO post with immediate effect, Han Xinyi, president and soon-to-be chief executive officer of the Hangzhou-based company, said in an internal email yesterday.

Liu joined Alibaba in 2010 and has overseen financial operations across multiple divisions, including AliExpress, Taobao, and Cainiao. He served as executive director and CFO of the courier unit from February 2016 through last month.

Han, who has served as Ant's CFO since April 2020, will succeed Eric Jing as CEO on March 1, he said, adding that Jing will focus on his role as chairman after being CEO for nine years.

Ant will continue to focus on three major strategies, Han said at an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of its mobile payment platform Alipay. These are Alipay's dual growth engines of digital payment and digital interconnection, accelerated globalization, and Artificial Intelligence First initiatives, he added.

The three innovative businesses, Ant International, Ant Digital Technology, and OceanBase, will operate independently, Han pointed out.

Improving net profit remains a key challenge for Ant, according to analysts. Its net profit plunged to CNY23.8 billion (USD3.3 billion) in 2023 from CNY73 billion in 2021, with it only starting to reverse the downtrend in the second quarter of last year when it saw a profit of around CNY7.5 billion (USD1 billion), up 193 percent from a year earlier, the analysts said, citing Alibaba's financial reports.

Amid increasing internet interconnectivity, Ant and Alipay must innovate their product offerings to maintain market share, industry experts pointed out.

According to data from iResearch, Alipay's share in the third-party mobile payment transaction market dropped to 54 percent in 2019 from 83 percent in 2014.

Editor: Martin Kadiev