AGTech inks online lottery deal with China’s Alipay

Hong Kong-based lottery technology supplier AGTech Holdings Ltd has inked a deal to operate the Alipay Lottery Channel, if and when the Chinese government allows online lottery sales to resume.

On Friday, AGTech announced it had entered into a 50/50 revenue-sharing deal under which it will distribute and sell regulated lottery products on the Alipay Lottery Channel “in the event that and so long as it is allowed under applicable laws and regulations” in China.

Alipay, a popular third-party online payment processor in China, is a subsidiary of Ant Financial Services Group, which is itself an affiliate of the Alibaba Group, which acquired AGTech in March 2016. In other words, this deal is essentially an in-house arrangement between related parties.

Alibaba’s popular consumer online marketplace Taobao.com used to run a lottery service that reportedly accounted for over 11% of online lottery sales in China. In March 2015, Taobao was forced to halt its online lottery sales in keeping with an edict from China’s Ministry of Finance, which ‘temporarily’ suspended all online sales after uncovering widespread fraud at provincial lottery administration centers.