Cheng Li, CTO of Ant Financial offered a public enunciation of the company’s technological strategy “BASIC” for the first time at the Computing Conference 2017 on October 11.

The acronym BASIC represents for Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Security, Internet of Things and Cloud Computing.

“The Five technological fields lay a groundwork for Alipay to achieve a series of technical breakthroughs in the payment industry: secured transactions, quick payment, mobile payment, buy now and pay later, brush face payment，” says Cheng.

But Cheng notes that technology is not a panacea and there are a lot of “can’ts”, or mainly four bottlenecks, such as massive IOT data-based safe computing, artificial intelligence applicable to fintech scenarios, a credible digital identity for all in the world, a safe and trustworthy digital world. And Cheng proposed that opening up is the only way to solve them.

“Be committed to opening up, Ant Financial has opened its technology developments in fincloud, open platform, risk management, credit and auditing.”

Cheng added that opening up is not one-way nor simply offering support. Instead, it is to create a better future on the same platform by overcoming “can’ts”.

At the conference, Ant financial announced that they will open up its biometric identification technologies by setting up a global technology platform ZOLOZ (it sounds like the Spanish word “solos”, meaning only). The platform aims to solve the problem of who’s who using biometric identification. Meanwhile, they will work with Bank of Nanjing to build an open ecosystem in financial sectors in an all-round way. And Cheng hopes to work with another 1000 financial institutions in five years.

The Ant Lab also announced to open up the blockchain technology to fight food fraud and increase the traceability of food products.