Ant Financial, a partner of Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba that runs the company’s payments offshoot, Alipay, has confirmed that it has raised $4.5 billion in what represents the world's largest-ever private funding round for an internet company.

The deal effectively places a value of roughly $60 billion on Alibaba’s rival to PayPal.

Ant Financial says the funds will be used to invest in essential infrastructure such as cloud computing and biometric authentication technology that will spur international growth and gain even more coverage in rural areas of China.

The company, which separated from Alibaba before its highly-anticipated initial public offering in 2014, operates Alipay which has more than 450 million active users and handles 170 million transactions each day. It also runs online money-market fund Yu'e Bao, a banking service called MYbank and a lending platform named Ant Micro Loan.

“The numbers being thrown around at any company with an affiliation with Alibaba remain fantastical,” noted Hardeep Sandhu, chief economist at Shinsei Corporate Management. “Is it worth 50% of Facebook? Of course it isn’t but the tech sector remains eminently bullish and, certainly, in terms of the bonanza if Ant went public, there would be some very happy people in the underwriting business,” he added.

Ant Financial has sought to expand Alipay beyond China in order to take advantage of the wave of Chinese tourism around the world by making it easier for them to make purchases while abroad.

“They’ve got a very ambitious expansion plan and this funding round will enable to get one step closer to helping Alibaba become a household name,” concluded Sandhu.

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