The contract has been signed, confirms The Office CEO , interviewed by Paperjam on the basis of a rumour: Tiktok and its parent company Bytedance will be hosted by The Office, like other high-profile companies such as Spotify and Wolt.

The Chinese company, whose figurehead is the social network Tiktok, is seeking to obtain an electronic payment licence in Luxembourg. Bytedance initially sought to go to Ireland, but the regulator “dragged its feet” on granting it the licence after HSBC closed the Chinese company’s bank accounts, criticising it for not doing enough to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

Paperjam has not been able to trace the company’s registration in Luxembourg, and Tiktok’s spokespeople had not yet gotten back to us at the time of publication.

After using solutions such as Stripe, Ayen, Paypal and Worldpay, the company has developed its own payment system. Since the beginning of the year, it has also been encouraging more creators to broadcast live and sell their products directly.

According to Bloomberg, in the spring Bytedance’s profit jumped by around 60% in 2023, outstripping the growth of Tencent and Alibaba. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation have jumped to more than $40bn from around $25bn in 2022, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named for private reasons. The world’s most valuable startup also increased its sales from $80bn to nearly $120bn, the sources said, referring to unaudited accounts.

According to Business of Apps on 19 August, Tiktok’s revenue jumped to $16.1m in 2023, 80% of which came from advertising. Bytedance derives two-thirds of its revenues from Douyin, the Chinese version of Tiktok. The social network for short videos had 1.6bn users at the end of 2023.

This article was originally published in .