Bilibili Grabs Majority Stake in State-owned Payments Company Yoyi Pay

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Shanghai-based video-sharing platform Bilibili has grabbed a majority stake in a state-owned Chinese payments company.

On 19 November Bilibili acquired a 65.5% stake in YoyiPay (浙江甬易电子支付有限公司) from Yuyao China Plastics City Group Co., Ltd. (余姚中国塑料城集团有限公司) and Yuyao China Plastics City Logistics Co., Ltd. (余姚中国塑料城物流有限公司) for a consideration of 117.9655 million yuan, according to figures from the Ningbo municipal public resources transaction centre.

YoyiPay was founded in July 2011 with registered capital of 100 million yuan, and is categorised as a state-owned enterprise that specialises in third party payments and settlement operations.

Yuyao China Plastics City Group and Yuyao China Plastics City Logistics were its largest shareholders, with equity stakes of 56.5% and 9% respectively.

First founded in August 2005, Bilibili is one of China’s leading video sharing websites. Bilibili has followed the lead of other Internet giants in China by expanding into the online payments area.

Bilibili first began to recruit personnel from the payments sector in November 2020, to be responsible for “wallet design and payments-related products,” as well as “payments platform core technology R&D”.

In January of this year Bilibili registered the URL’s “bilibilipay.com” and “bilibilipay.c,” while in June of this year it commenced testing of its “Theatre Room Red Packet” (放映室红包).