Alipay
China's biggest payment app — it started as an escrow service for Taobao and became a financial empire inside a QR code.
Alibaba launched Alipay in 2004 to fix the trust problem on its Taobao marketplace: the buyer paid Alipay, which held the money until the goods arrived. Credit cards were rare in China, so escrow became the payment method. The service was later moved into the separately run Ant Financial, now Ant Group.
When smartphones arrived, China largely skipped the card terminal: the merchant printed a QR code and the customer scanned it. Alipay piled on funds, loans and credit scores until the app was a bank in all but name. Chinese regulators halted Ant Group's IPO in November 2020, two days before trading was due to begin, and forced a restructuring.