(Yicai) Aug. 18 -- Agentic commerce is set for “explosive growth” in the next six to 12 months, according to Han Xinyi, chief executive officer of Ant Group, the fintech giant behind China’s ubiquitous mobile payments app Alipay.

As the capabilities of artificial intelligence agents go on improving, they will become “new intermediaries” between vendors and shoppers, Han said at Alipay's inaugural AI Ecosystem Partner Conference held in Hangzhou yesterday.

AI agents will more efficiently match buyers’ needs with products, so that many previously overlooked and granular needs can be met, thereby expanding the market, he noted.

They will also drive a shift in the division of labor and value distribution, moving away from a focus on "traffic entry points" to "depth of understanding" and "quality of fulfillment," which will trigger a surge in new business opportunities, he pointed out.

At the conference, Alipay launched its first full-stack agentic commerce platform aimed at supporting merchants in the agentic era. The company also revealed that Abao, its super-service AI agent, has successfully integrated more than 10,000 services, including partnerships with five major smartphone brands and 16 leading carmakers.

In addition, Alipay unveiled the AHA protocol system -- the first cross-platform interconnection standard for AI agents -- and said it is working with partners such as Qwen, Huawei Technologies, Oppo Mobile Telecommunications, Vivo, Honor, BYD, and Geely Automobile Holdings to build an interconnected ecosystem for AI agents.

AI agents can help payment providers move beyond fee-based competition, Guo Tao, angel investor and senior AI expert, told Yicai. By integrating them into every stage of a transaction -- from consumer decision-making and product selection to price comparison and order placement -- payment services can shift from being a back-end tool to playing a role at the front end of buying decisions, he said.

This positions AI agents as a key lever for payment providers to establish the next-generation transaction entry point, Guo noted.

For agentic commerce to truly achieve scalability, it is essential to enhance merchants' operational efficiency while developing value for users, Guo noted. "The challenges payment providers face are quite real," he said. “If merchants cannot see tangible benefits, their willingness to participate will quickly diminish.”

The potential for agentic commerce is vast, but to turn the expected "explosive growth" into a reality, the industry still has much work to do, Guo said.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione