On top of the basic construct, developers have added many interactive mechanisms to boost Ant Farm’s participation. According its 2016 Corporate Social Responsibility Report, Ant Financial’s philanthropy platform has raised more than $140 million for the services provided to its partner nonprofits.
The parent company of Alipay and Ant Farm, Ant Financial, is working closely with governmental offices like Jiangsu Sihong Poverty Alleviation Office and more than 1,200 charity organizations. Through daily payments via Alipay users can feed their chicken and collect hearts to be donated to charity projects. Ant Farm came into being, representing the balance between marketing strategy and fulfillment of social responsibility.Īnt Farm is a pre-installed online game program inside the Alipay mobile phone application, in which users keep a virtual chicken as a pet. Such immense popularity of the platform opened the door to the utilization of its unprecedented user-engagement for social good. A Forbes article claims that “cash really is becoming a thing of the past” because a “smartphone (with Alipay) will do nicely”. Alipay rules China’s mobile payment market with absolute authority. At present, Alipay has a user base of 520 million people, handles more than 170 million transactions per day and accounts for more than two-thirds of mobile payments in China.Ĭredit card use only has about 400 million patrons. Alipay’s in-app game program “Ant Farm” is an excellent example of successful gamification of philanthropy by businesses.Īlipay, China’s largest third-party online payment platform, has reshaped the landscape of payment services in China for the last decade. While the internet has brought dramatic change to the ways people live their daily lives, it has also opened many doors for businesses to fulfill their corporate social responsibility.