.jpg)
Jiang-Ming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer of Ant International, emphasized this role during his address at The Economist’s Technology for Change conference in March 2026.
The pace of consumer AI adoption has surpassed most historical technologies, fueling massive growth in AI-facilitated transactions. Analysts forecast this spend to hit nearly US$8 trillion by 2030. Consumers increasingly favor digital wallets, APMs, and open banking, especially in emerging markets where Juniper Research predicts over 6 billion digital wallet users by 2030—covering more than three-quarters of the global population. Emerging markets lead overall growth, yet merchants encounter challenges like foreign exchange volatility and barriers to international platforms.
FinAI plays a pivotal role in helping merchants handle global payment systems and thrive in AI-driven commerce. Payments providers can evolve into comprehensive FinAIaaS partners, enabling more efficient, immersive, and secure customer engagement. Ant International delivers five critical FinAI capabilities: one seamless checkout supporting cards, digital wallets, and open banking; one agent partner to simplify global payment complexity; customizable solutions for agentic payments and commerce; embedded payments adding extra value; and an AI-powered payment security foundation.
AI distills technology and operational expertise into a single agent, allowing businesses to manage end-to-end operations—from onboarding to optimizing payment success rates—via one partner. Solutions such as Antom Copilot dramatically cut merchant payment integration time by up to 90% and boost dispute-handling efficiency by 46%, opening growth opportunities widely. “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,” said Yang. “Now, AI can change the way we operate by giving businesses access to a single agent partner that is available 24/7.” Ant International collaborates with major players like Google on the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) standards to guide agent operations across the shopping journey.
While AI unlocks immense potential, it introduces challenges such as deepfakes and evolving threats. Ant International counters these with advanced solutions, including an anti-deepfake tool achieving over 99% detection rates and the SHIELD 3-in-1 Transformer model identifying high-risk transactions with over 95% precision—creating a unified trust layer for AI-driven payments. “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,” Yang added.
Ant International's trusted FinAI innovations position payments providers to bridge the gap for secure, inclusive agentic commerce, empowering merchants worldwide to capitalize on AI advancements while maintaining robust security and efficiency.
TechIntelPro empowers B2B technology decision-makers with the latest industry trends, deep insights, leadership perspectives and actionable intelligence to drive both organizational and professional milestones—and thrive on the tech pulse.