From playing with lasers to leading Alipay’s technology team— a conversation with Ant Financial’s Cheng Li

Having a scientist parent who lets you play with laser-shooting devices is probably every geek-child’s dream come true. Recently, Ant Financial’s Chief Technology Officer CHENG Li sat down with China-based tech media InfoQ, where he spoke about his boyhood inspiration, building up Alipay’s technology infrastructure, and a scolding from Alibaba founder Jack Ma. We produce a transcript of the interview below.

Cheng Li: The years 2009 to 2019 is a decade which marks leaps and bounds in China’s Internet technology, not only in terms of market scale but also in quality and the nature of technology. Looking back at the development of Alipay, the pace of its growth has been beyond my imagination. All of us have done, and continue to, do our best to keep up with the amazing speed of its growth.

I would say this is the best of times. The company has been growing rapidly. If you can match the responsibilities that have been designated to you then you’re actually growing, even if you are not aware of it.

My engineering spirit is a gift from my father. He was a physicist. He used to go to work in his lab every weekend. He would take me along and let me help with some simple tasks. He made large laser devices. The devices had lids that needed to be tightened by screws and they were then vacuumed. The success of the experiment depended on whether the screws were tightened securely to ensure no air leaked in.

My father often praised me on how well I could tighten the screws. That was my initial understanding of craftsmanship in engineering.

Regarding cutting edge technologies we are working on now, the success of a project or a system usually only relies on a few key parameters. So, we still need that kind of craftsmanship

Q：Can we say that you are applying the same principles now as when you were tightening screws in the old days?

Cheng Li：Exactly, a lot of that.

Q: From the computing perspective, what has happened to programmers’ lives in the past decade?

Cheng Li: As you can see, before 2009 there were only two questions for programmers. First, to provide a stable technology infrastructure for businesses by ensuring uninterrupted operations. Second was to effectively address and respond to all requirements from the business teams.

At that time, stability and efficiency was our key focus. We saw system architecture as the core of our work. We believed an excellent architect should be able to bring stability and efficiency.

After 2009, with all these revolutionary emerging technologies, although stability and efficiency remained a core issue from a commercial perspective, the bar for technology has risen. Technology shall become the true enabler and driver for business innovations.

Over the course of Alipay’s development, we have encountered many difficulties and challenges every step of the way but we managed to overcome them.

In January 2010, if I remember correctly it was a very different annual staff meeting. After the speech of Shao Xiaofeng, who was Alipay’s President at the time, all lights went out and the venue was completely dark. We heard a client’s voice out of nowhere, complaining about our services in a lot of detail. We listened to that customer in the dark before the lights were turned back on.

Jack Ma went up to the stage and presented a simple conclusion. “Alipay sucks, you made a mess.”

I was so shocked. And then Lucy Peng went up to the stage, announcing that she would become the new President of Alipay. She shared Alipay’s new goals. At that time our major pain point was a very low payment completion rate. To complete one single payment, users had to switch back and forth multiple times between Alipay’s site and their bank’s website. The success rate was never better than 70%.

“I assign you all a target to increase the payment completion rate from 70% to over 90% within this year,” Lucy said. “No excuse, just make it work.”

After that, this became the goal for our whole company. From 70% to 90%. Instead of talking about comprehensive strategies or architecture like we did in the past, we have one single specific goal.

With that, we made significant innovations in 2010. Which is what we now call Quick Pay and is used in our everyday transactions. Quick Pay improved the payment success rate from 70% to over 95%.

Looking back, over the last ten years, we achieved one key technological breakthrough every one or two years. From an emerging technology to entering markets and then changing the way businesses operate, we saw a rapid generational upgrade.

Q：To you, what is the future of China’s Internet technology?

Cheng Li: It’s difficult to predict the future, but I can share my own expectations.

As the industry pioneer we are looking to address problems in society that have never been considered before. These challenges will drive technological innovation in China so we can also expect new waves of product upgrades.

In the next five to ten years we can expect more China-originated innovations will emerge.

Click here to watch a video of the original interview.

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