China's payment app is turning shops into something an AI can operate — menus, checkout and all
At its first AI ecosystem conference in Hangzhou on 17 August, Alipay launched what it describes as China's first full-stack agentic commerce platform. The idea is to convert a merchant's existing pages, products and service workflows into skills and tools an AI agent can call, so that a customer can order and pay by talking to an assistant instead of tapping through an app. For merchants who already have AI services, the platform offers agent creation, skill orchestration, task execution and operations management; for those who do not, it does the conversion. Alipay bundles in its own payment, identity verification, risk control and fulfilment machinery, so a merchant plugs into all of it at once. The services connect to Alipay's assistant, Ah Bao, through a protocol it calls AHA, meant to let those same merchant services be reached from outside Alipay — through phones, cars and AI glasses. As of August, Alipay says Ah Bao is connected with five leading smartphone brands representing more than 70 percent of the market, and 16 carmakers.
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