The number of merchants using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to integrate payment services with Ant International has quadrupled over the past 12 months, the company noted. As the demand grows, the company plans broader rollout of AI-native tools across payments, foreign exchange, treasury, and credit operations.
Image: AI-generated
Ant International disclosed the data on September 18, at its annual VOYAGE merchant event in Shanghai. The company also unveiled a full stack of AI-native financial solutions that has over hundred different products. Some of the notable components of the solution suite include:
- payment foundation model (Antom 3-in-1 Transformer),
- forecasting model for FX and liquidity (FalconTST),
- blockchain-based wholesale settlement platform (WhaleRTP),
- Agentic Mobile Protocol (AMP).
The company expects 95% of merchants to be able to onboard new payment methods within one hour by the end of 2026. Ant International also says that 89.5% of merchants using its Antom merchant payment service have already deployed AI agents, and now AI assists them with 81.4% of payment tasks.
“The future fintech leader delivers two things: a future-ready trust infrastructure and foundational FinAI models that combine complex types of deep data and rich domain expertise, and a full stack of connected AI-native solutions across payment, account, FX, treasury and growth operations that prepare them for today and the fully agentised future,” said Peng Yang, CEO of Ant International, addressing more than 1,100 executives at the event.
At the center of the new Ant’s tech stack is Antom Autopilot, a conversational tool built on the announced Transformer payment foundation model. The tool is supposed to handle the merchant payment lifecycle (e.g. onboarding, integration, payment routing, fraud protection, revenue recovery, troubleshooting, reconciliation, and market expansion) in a single interface. The company said Autopilot cut lead time to first transaction from days to minutes in real-world cases.
Among other AI-driven payment products introduced or expanded, Antom SmartDispute is notable. It advises on dispute management and appeal strategies, which is an important aspect once AI agents start spending real money. The tool is credited with raising average dispute success rates from 24.5% to 41.8%. There is also fully automated Antom AutoDispute solution. It handles the dispute process end-to-end instead of just advising.
Antom Revenue Booster, in turn, applies smart routing and retry logic to card payments, while Antom EasySafePay lets customers complete transactions on the merchant checkout page without redirecting to a separate wallet app.
The AI-native stack spans across Ant International’s four business pillars, i.e. Alipay+, Antom, WorldFirst, and Bettr. The scale is big, so users should expect a phased rollout to global markets continuing through the second half of 2026.
Ant International has recently accelerated its work in agentic commerce. One of the company’s latest initiatives is a collaboration with Visa and Mastercard to verify AI shopping agents. The payment giants want to jointly establish interoperable know-your-agent standards for automated purchasing.
