Xi’an, China-based SkyPeople Fruit Juice Inc. announced that the Board of Directors approved Future World Trading (Hong Kong) Ltd.’s, a wholly owned subsidiary of SkyPeople, acquisition of Shaanxi Quangoutong E-commerce Inc., an eCommerce company and wholly owned subsidiary of SkyPeople International Holdings Group Ltd., which is the major shareholder of SkyPeople Fruit Juice Inc. The relevant agreement was signed March 16.

“The acquisition of Quangoutong is an important strategic move for the company as it is based on the company’s development plan, which is to diversify our business to include lighter asset businesses in addition to our more capital intensive operations,” said Hongke Xue, chief executive officer of SkyPeople, in a statement. “We believe that a healthy flow of capital is essential to all modern enterprises, and our entry into the [financial technology] (FinTech) space is intended to strengthen our own business, reinforce and develop strong partnering collaborations, and capitalize upon an emerging high technology sector.”

The acquisition of Quangoutong will bring innovative business development and sales models, including a reward points system that has cooperation agreements with other alliances, the company says. SkyPeople also plans to use Quangoutong to apply for an online third-party payment license with the Chinese government to upgrade its distribution and sales system to better integrate Internet and traditional business, it adds.

SkyPeople also will benefit from Quangoutong’s advanced sales model and will continue to develop its risk control and operation standardization processes in the FinTech industry, it says. BI