Unicorns beware: ants are on the up. Last week, Ant Financial, the online payments affiliate of Chinese e-retailer Alibaba, became the largest Chinese private company on record, kicking off a funding round that would value the company as highly as $60bn. That puts it in second place worldwide behind Uber of the US, whose most recent fundraising valued that company at more than $60bn.

Big numbers for a nominally small creature, in Ant Financial’s case, but online payment has big potential in China. Consumers there are well ahead of their US counterparts in online shopping. Credit Suisse estimates that in 2014 the internet accounted for 9 per cent of retail sales in China, compared with 6 per cent in the US. And online payment is not limited to buying goods for home delivery: Chinese shoppers frequently use mobile payment apps to settle anything from taxi fares to restaurant bills. The broker reckons that over $3tn in transactions were closed online last year.

Ant Financial has over half the market. Internet rival Tencent has market share of one-fifth with its system Tenpay; China’s near-monopoly renminbi credit card settlement provider, China UnionPay, has 6 per cent. Meanwhile, in December, Apple and Samsung each announced partnerships with China UnionPay to bring their payment systems to China.