Alipay unveils a comprehensive shift towards AI-powered commerce, integrating agents across devices and sectors to transform consumer and merchant interactions through innovative platforms and partnerships.
Alipay has unveiled a broader push into AI-driven commerce, using its latest ecosystem conference to frame agents as a new layer between consumers and merchants. The company said it is building a smart-agent commercial platform around its Agent Hub Access protocol, with more than 20 partners already involved, including BYD and Geely. The aim is to let services be packaged, discovered and executed more easily across devices and digital channels as agentic software becomes more common.
At the centre of the strategy is Abao, Alipay’s super-service AI, which the company says has already converted more than 10,000 services into AI-based workflows. Ant Group says Abao now supports five major smartphone brands and 16 leading automotive makers, and demand from merchants for integration is already running ahead of delivery. The company has indicated that some development requests are now scheduled for next year, suggesting the rollout will be phased rather than immediate.
The wider commercial logic is to move from conventional app-based interaction towards intent-led transactions, in which users ask for an outcome and an AI agent handles the steps in between. According to the company, that requires not just language models, but also trusted payment rails, merchant integration and interoperability between different agents. Alipay is presenting its platform as the connective tissue for that system.
Industry coverage from Pandaily says Alipay has also launched an AI Open Platform that allows merchants to turn services into plug-ins for AI agents on phones, cars and other smart terminals. That reflects a push to make commerce functions machine-readable and easier to execute without forcing users to navigate separate applications. In parallel, reports from Nation Press and Fintech News say Alipay has introduced AI Wallet and Token Pay, products designed to let consumers authorise AI-led purchases and to give model providers a business-to-business payment layer for subscriptions and microtransactions.
The move places Alipay in the middle of a broader race to define how payments will work in an agent economy. A separate report from Payspace Magazine said Alipay has also struck a system-level partnership with StepFun to extend AI agents beyond conversation and into everyday services. Taken together, the announcements suggest Alipay is trying to position itself not just as a payments app, but as infrastructure for AI commerce across consumer devices, vehicles and merchant systems.
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