Ant International said FinAI has become the essential infrastructure to enable secure agentic commerce at scale as artificial intelligence drives transformation across the global economy. Jiang-Ming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer of Ant International, made the remarks at The Economist’s Technology for Change conference in March 2026.
Global Commerce and Payment Trends
Consumer adoption of AI has accelerated faster than almost any other technology in history. Analysts forecast AI-facilitated spending to reach nearly $8 trillion by 2030, representing nearly a quarter of all online sales. Meanwhile, digital wallets and alternative payment methods continue to gain traction, particularly in emerging markets.
Juniper Research expects the number of digital wallet users to grow to over 6 billion by 2030, covering more than three quarters of the global population. However, merchants in emerging markets face increasing foreign exchange volatility and high barriers to entry on international e-commerce platforms.
FinAI Capabilities for Next-Generation Commerce
Yang stated that FinAI will be key in helping merchants navigate global payment systems and adapt to AI-driven commerce. Payment firms will become one-stop FinAIaaS partners enabling businesses to engage customers more efficiently and securely.
According to Yang, Ant International provides five types of critical FinAI capabilities. These include seamless checkout for cross-channel payments covering cards, digital wallets, and open banking. The company also offers agent partners to resolve global payment complexity and customizable solutions for agentic payments and commerce.
Additionally, the platform provides embedded payments for value-added services and an AI-powered payment security foundation. Solutions such as Antom Copilot can reduce merchant payment integration time by up to 90% and improve dispute-handling efficiency by 46%.
Expanding Access Through AI Technology
“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.”
Jiang-Ming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer, Ant International
Ant International is collaborating with Google on its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) standards. These standards guide how agents can operate across the entire shopping journey, supporting agentic commerce growth.
AI-Powered Security Solutions
Alongside growth opportunities, AI presents new challenges for merchants and consumers. Deepfakes have become a persistent problem in digital transactions. Ant International has developed an advanced anti-deepfake solution with detection rates exceeding 99%.
Yang highlighted the company’s SHIELD 3-in-1 Transformer model, which identifies high-risk transactions with over 95% precision. The model provides a single trust layer for AI-driven payment security. Yang stated that trust will always be the foundation of payments and will continue to be at the core of FinAI development.