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Alipay launches agentic commerce platform for merchants

Alipay, Ant Group’s payments and services app in China, said in Hangzhou on August 17 that it launched what it called China’s first full-stack agentic commerce platform to help merchants build and run AI agents for commerce, payments, and services.

The platform lets merchants turn product pages and service workflows into tools that AI agents can use. It also provides tools to create and manage agents, execute tasks, and connect merchant services to Ah Bao, Alipay’s AI assistant launched in June 2026.

Alipay said Ah Bao offers more than 10,000 AI-powered services.

Agentic commerce generally refers to AI systems that research, plan, and complete purchases or service tasks for consumers or businesses with limited human input.

Alipay said Ah Bao is connected with five smartphone brands that together account for more than 70% of the market, and 16 automakers.

It also launched an incentive program offering free tokens, transaction-based token subsidies, and lower payment fees for developers and merchants.

The launch comes as rivals experiment with payment-linked AI agents. In June, Tencent integrated a desktop AI agent with WeChat Pay that could complete transactions on users’ behalf within Tencent’s ecosystem.

In China, public generative AI services must protect personal information and use lawfully sourced data, while some large-scale assistants may face security assessments under existing rules.

🔗 Source: Alipay

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