Alipay has introduced what it describes as China's first full-stack agentic commerce platform, unveiled at its AI Ecosystem Partner Conference in China. The platform is designed to move merchants from digital operations towards AI-driven operations, offering a set of tools that businesses can adopt according to their existing technical capabilities.
The offering is built around two tracks. Merchants that already operate digital storefronts but lack AI infrastructure are provided with a one-stop solution that converts existing pages, product listings, and service workflows into agent-ready Skills and MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools, intended to lower the technical barrier to AI adoption. Merchants that already run AI-enabled services can instead use the platform for agent creation, skill orchestration, task execution, and operations management, covering areas such as customer insights, product recommendations, and membership management.
The platform also connects merchants to Alipay's wider Ah Bao ecosystem through the AHA protocol, which supports interoperability across agents and devices. A single integration allows merchants to reach users beyond the Alipay application, extending to smartphones, connected cars, AI glasses, and other AI applications. Alipay has bundled additional capabilities into the platform, including AI-based payment processing, identity verification, risk management, and service fulfilment.
Ah Bao's growth since launch
Ah Bao, described by Alipay as a super service AI agent, was launched in June 2026 and provides access to more than 10,000 AI-powered everyday services, including utility bill payments, pet service bookings, and electric vehicle charging point searches, through conversational interaction. Retail brands including KFC, Mixue Bingcheng, and Luckin Coffee have integrated their services into Ah Bao, allowing consumers to order and pay directly through the agent.
As of August 2026, Ah Bao has been connected to five smartphone brands, which together account for over 70% of the market, alongside 16 automakers. In July 2026, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, foundation model company StepFun and Alipay announced a system-level partnership powered by AHA, allowing users to access Ah Bao's services through StepFun's AI-native terminal or its large language model. A demonstration at the conference showed an AI agent on StepFun's device locating an electric vehicle charging point and generating a coffee order in a single conversational request, without switching between separate applications.
In the same month, OPPO partnered with Alipay to connect its AI agent, Breeno, to Ah Bao, allowing OPPO smartphone users to complete tasks such as cinema ticket bookings through conversational commands, without leaving the application in use.
Developer and merchant incentives
To support adoption among individual developers and merchants, Alipay has launched an AI Business Incentive Program. This includes 100 million free tokens per user, subsidies for tokens generated through completed transactions, and reduced payment processing fees.
An Ant Group official said agentic commerce is expected to grow over the next 6 to 12 months, positioning AI agents as a new interface linking large numbers of consumers with merchants. An Alipay Business Group official added that the company intends to continue building infrastructure to support AI transformation across industries as connectivity between devices and agents expands.
