Alipay opens agentic commerce platform to Chinese merchants

Alipay has launched a full-stack agentic commerce platform in China, giving merchants a route to integrate AI-powered services into its Ah Bao agent ecosystem, the company said in an announcement carried by Finextra on August 17. The platform packages AI business tools that merchants can select according to their existing capabilities.

For merchants running digital operations without AI capability, the platform converts pages, products and service workflows into what Alipay calls agent-ready Skills and MCP tools. Merchants that already operate AI services gain agent creation, skill orchestration, task execution and operations management functions covering customer insights, product recommendations and membership handling.

“Through trust, connectivity, and an open ecosystem, Alipay will help build a new generation of AI-powered services and support agentic commerce growth,” said Cyril Han, chief executive of Ant Group.

A single integration extends merchant reach beyond Alipay’s own users to consumers on smartphones, in cars, and through AI glasses and applications, the company said, using an interoperability protocol Alipay calls AHA that supports cross-agent and cross-device interaction. The platform also carries Alipay’s payment, identity verification, risk management and fulfilment capabilities.

Ah Bao launched in June as a consumer-facing agent offering access to more than 10,000 everyday services through conversation, from utility bills to booking appointments and locating electric vehicle charging points. Retail brands including KFC and Mixue Bingcheng are among those in the ecosystem. The agent operates strictly as a process operator, with final payments requiring explicit user confirmation, Alipay said at the time.

The merchant platform follows a run of agentic products from the company this year, including an AI payment infrastructure built around AI Pay, AI Wallet and Token Pay launched in May, and an upgrade in July connecting an AI agent to 30 million Alipay Tap devices used by offline merchants.