According to the Financial Times, ByteDance is negotiating a banking license to add a finance service among its subsidiaries, which include the TikTok application.
Before going into details, it is necessary to make some clarifications about ByteDance.
It’s a Chinese company that in November 2017 acquired the platform Musical.ly for 1 billion dollars and that in the following year merged the company to create TikTok, making it one of the most used applications of the moment.
The success of this application has also led to a reassessment of ByteDance’s plans, which only a few days ago announced that it will shut down Vigo Video to focus its efforts on other businesses.
Why the need for a banking license?
TikTok allows managing the purchase and sale of advertising, but currently, it has to rely on external solutions such as WeChat and Alipay as far as China is concerned, while in Europe it relies on PayPal, services that are obviously not free and which retain significant fees.
Obtaining a banking license would allow to level that kind of cost and expand the offer for other products, not just advertising. For example, they could create an e-commerce solution within the platform and then show users the products in the videos so they don’t leave the platform.
For the moment no other details are known about this type of agreement and whether it will be successful, but it is clear that the ByteDance group wants to expand into the financial sector.
TikTok and the blockchain
In December 2019, ByteDance created a joint venture with the Chinese media Shanghai Dongfang Newspaper to use blockchain and artificial intelligence to protect the copyright of the content produced.
The blockchain would have been used, as planned at the time, to increase the security of applications, but currently little is known about the project.
