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By Tang Guhan

Yuebao, a wealth management app of Alibaba's Ant Financial, helped its users to make an aggregated profit of 170 billion yuan (24.67 billion U.S. dollars) in five years, according to recently unveiled data by the company.

Surveys show that over 80 percent of netizens said they had used Yuebao to manage their wealth. "As one can withdraw money from Yuebao at any time, which makes it convenient to use it for daily savings, while banks' current accounts are not a wise choice since they barely have any yield," said an interviewee. "Besides, we can make credit repayments and do online shopping on the same platform."

Yuebao invests in Chinese treasury bonds, central bank bills, interbank deposits and other low-risk assets after collecting funds from its retail customers.

Experts also projected that the app would gain more popularity as it had updated its services.

The yields of Yuebao are predicted to go upward at the end of every year as commercial banks are competing for deposits through offering high yield rates for their customers, said Yu Huifeng, a financial analyst. "It is likely the annual yield rate will rebound to 3 percent by the end of this year." 

Earlier in 2008, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, said, "If banks do not change themselves, we will change them." For Chinese customers, no matter in what way they manage their wealth, either through banks or the Yuebao platform, they only believe in those who return their investments with higher yields safely.