Jiang-Ming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer of Ant International, stated that FinAI is becoming the essential backbone for enabling secure agentic commerce at scale, driven by AI’s transformative impact across the global economy.
Rapid consumer adoption of AI is reshaping commerce, with analysts forecasting AI-facilitated spending to reach nearly US$8 trillion by 2030, representing almost a quarter of all online sales. Concurrently, consumers are increasingly embracing new payment methods such as digital wallets, other alternative payment methods (APMs), and open banking, particularly in emerging markets. Juniper Research projects the number of digital wallet users to exceed 6 billion by 2030, encompassing over three-quarters of the global population. Emerging markets, while driving global growth, present challenges for merchants including increased foreign exchange volatility and barriers to operating on international e-commerce platforms.
Yang highlighted that FinAI will be crucial in assisting merchants to navigate global payment systems and adapt to AI-driven commerce. Payment firms are expected to evolve into one-stop FinAI-as-a-Service (FinAIaaS) partners, enabling businesses to engage customers more efficiently, immersively, and securely. Ant International provides five key FinAI capabilities: a seamless checkout for cross-channel payments (including cards, digital wallets, and open banking), a single agent partner to simplify global payment complexity, customizable solutions for agentic payments and commerce, embedded payments for added value, and an AI-powered payment security foundation.
Agentic fintech enables businesses of all sizes to distill technology and operational expertise into a single AI agent. This allows for end-to-end operations, from onboarding to optimizing payment success rates, through one partner. Solutions like Antom Copilot exemplify this, capable of reducing merchant payment integration time by up to 90% and improving dispute-handling efficiency by 46%, thereby expanding access to growth opportunities.
Yang explained, “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. 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 collaborating with significant industry players to support agentic commerce growth, including Google, on its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) standards, which guide how agents can operate across the entire shopping journey.
Alongside growth potential, AI also introduces new challenges related to trust and security, such as deepfakes. To address this, Ant International has developed an advanced anti-deepfake solution, demonstrating detection rates exceeding 99%. Yang also referenced the company’s SHIELD 3-in-1 Transformer model, which identifies high-risk transactions with over 95% precision, as vital for establishing a unified trust layer for AI-driven payment security.
Yang emphasized, “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.” These remarks were made during a case study address at The Economist’s Technology for Change conference in March 2026.
