Ant Group’s global merchant payments powerhouse unit, Antom, has made a foray into agentic payments, enabling AI agents to initiate and complete transactions on users’ behalf.
Antom has launched an agentic payment solution that supports both alternative payment methods, such as digital wallets, and more traditional card-based payments.
Agentic payments are transactions initiated and completed by AI agents on behalf of users. They require new models for authorization, traceability, and fraud prevention since payments can be triggered in multi-step conversations rather than through traditional clicks.
A key feature of Antom’s new system is EasySafePay, which allows digital wallets to be used at checkout without redirecting to external apps. The solution also uses multi-party computation and device-level security to reduce fraud and misuse.
The protocol also includes an AI-ready payment mandate model, linking user intent with transaction details to make payments more transparent and traceable. This design aims to improve dispute resolution and safeguard user control.
To facilitate card-based payments, Antom is also working with Mastercard and Visa in the Asia Pacific region to pilot tokenized card-based agentic payments. These pilots explore how AI agents can use tokenized cards securely, with authentication and transaction controls. This is one of the first times Visa and Mastercard have tested agentic payment flows with a partner.
Both card payment networks introduced their initiatives to enable the future of AI-driven agentic commerce in April.
Mastercard’s Agent Pay enables AI agents to make secure, personalized purchases on behalf of users. It introduces agentic tokens, leveraging the company’s existing tokenization tech, and is built to scale through collaborations with AI platforms like Microsoft and partners in merchant services.
Visa’s counterpart, Intelligent Commerce, equips AI agents with trusted rails for secure, seamless purchases as well. It includes tools like a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and an Acceptance Agent Toolkit, allowing developers or even non-technical users to integrate and authorize payments through AI agents with ease.
