Ant Group Tests AI Assistant Upgrade for Alipay as Competition with WeChat Intensifies

Ant Group Plans Agentic-Focused Upgrade of Alipay Super App | PYMNTS.com

That's according to a report Monday (June 15) from Bloomberg News, which characterizes the move as escalating Alipay's contest with rival WeChat. The report, citing sources familiar with the company's plans and a video demo viewed by Bloomberg, said the new version of Alipay will let users ask an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant to do things like order food, book a ride and conduct money management tasks. Bloomberg notes that the update is part of a wider trend in the AI space, with the convenience of agentic tools becoming the chief focus for the industry. Apps like Alipay and the Tencent-owned WeChat are already part of daily life in China, the report said, with people using them to do things like paying utility bills or booking travel. Consumers in China have also shown an appetite for these services by embracing the OpenClaw framework for homemade AI agents. Tencent is also testing an AI agent prototype in WeChat, the report said. The two platforms each have upwards of one billion users, Bloomberg added, which means they could provide a template into how to integrate AI agents into mobile software to automate everyday tasks. PYMNTS examined the rise of agentic AI in digital commerce last week in an interview with Tim Joslyn, chief technology officer at Paymentology. As that report pointed out, agentic AI is scaling toward a digital commerce space in which AI agents will purchase items for people. This means fewer human shoppers exploring storefronts, comparing products, entering card information and hitting checkout buttons, all of which could transform the infrastructure layer of commerce. "We've been seeing machine-to-machine payments for years, whether it's automated billing or cloud billing, API consumption models, things like that," Joslyn told PYMNTS. "What's changing now is that AI is the one effectively making the decision." The broader implication is that agentic AI could spark a shift in commerce power away from whoever controls the storefront and toward whoever owns the decision layer. "It's easy to get something to recommend you a product," Joslyn said. "But the hard part is allowing it to spend your money." That's an important distinction, the report continued. While the infrastructure for moving money autonomously already exists, what is now emerging is a layer of AI-driven decision-making that comes before the payment itself and decides if an AI agent should be trusted to make purchases in the first place.

Jack Ma-Backed Ant Group Tests Major AI Overhaul for Alipay Super App

People familiar with the project said the new interface remains under internal testing. Ant Group has not announced a launch date and declined to comment on the reported plans. Therefore, some features could change before any public release. The redesigned Alipay app would feature an AI assistant known as 'Ah Bao.' Users could ask the assistant to book a ride, order coffee or arrange food delivery. They could enter instructions through text or voice. The could also handle some financial tasks. According to people familiar with the plans, users may be able to authorize the assistant to purchase mutual funds. However, the exact approval process and security controls have not been disclosed. Ant has not publicly confirmed whether every Alipay user would receive these tools. The release schedule also 'has yet to be finalized,' according to people with knowledge of the internal tests. This leaves questions over when the service may launch and which regions will receive it first. Alipay already provides payments, travel bookings, utility services and other tools within one app. Adding an AI agent could reduce the number of steps users need to complete each task. Instead of opening separate service pages, a person could make one direct request.