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Jiang-Ming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer of Ant International, highlights how payments providers can play a bigger role to support businesses with trusted FinAI solutions

Global shifts in commerce and payments

-- The speed of consumer AI adoption has outpaced almost any other technology in history, with analysts forecasting AI-facilitated spend to reach nearly US$8 trillion by 2030 - nearly a quarter of all online sales.

-- Consumers are embracing new payment methods. Digital wallets and other alternative payment methods (APMs) as well as open banking continue to grow in popularity, especially in emerging markets. Juniper Research expects the number of digital wallet users to grow to over 6 billion by 2030, covering over three quarters of the global population.

-- Emerging markets are driving global growth, but merchants there face increasing foreign exchange volatility and high barriers to doing business on international e-commerce platforms.

FinAI paving the last mile for next-gen commerce

FinAI will be key in helping merchants navigate global payments systems and adapt to AI-driven commerce, Yang said. Payment firms will become one-stop FinAIaaS partners enabling businesses to engage customers more efficiently, immersively and securely.

According to Yang, Ant International provides five types of critical FinAI capabilities:

-- One seamless checkout for cross-channel payments (card, digital wallets, and open banking),

-- One agent partner to resolve global payment complexity,

-- Customisable solutions for agentic payments and commerce,

-- Embedded payments for extra value-added, and

-- AI-powered payment security foundation.

Agentic fintech to businesses of all sizes

With AI, technology and operating know-how can be distilled into a single agent, enabling businesses to conduct end-to-end operations from onboarding to optimising payment success rates through one partner. Solutions such as Antom Copilot, which can reduce merchant payment integration time by up to 90% and improve dispute-handling efficiency by 46%, vastly expand access to growth opportunities.

"In the past, only large enterprises had the luxury of hiring large teams to handle the complexities of dealing with global expansion and different payment methods," said Yang. "Now, AI can change the way we operate by giving businesses access to a single agent partner that is available 24/7."

Ant International is already working with major players to support agentic commerce growth, collaborating with Google on its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) standards, which guide how agents can operate across the entire shopping journey.

Trust as the foundation for growth

Alongside growth potential, AI also brings new challenges to merchants and consumers. Deepfakes, for example, have become a persistent problem. Ant International has developed an advanced anti-deepfake solution, which demonstrate detection rates of over 99%. Yang also highlighted the company's SHIELD 3-in-1 Transformer model, which is able to identify high-risk transactions with over 95% precision, as key to providing a single trust layer for AI-driven payment security.

"AI-powered threats are no longer just theoretical, they are a reality that we face today. As technologies evolve, one thing does not change - trust will always be the foundation of payments, and will continue to be at the core of our FinAI development journey," Yang added. He made the remarks in a case study address at The Economist's Technology for Change conference in March 2026.

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