After WeChat official announced the internal test of AI intelligent agent, Alipay also began to carry out AI transformation.
On June 14, 2026, according to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, Ant Group is secretly testing the AI version of Alipay, and will introduce an agent assistant named “A Bao”, which can help users take a taxi, order takeout, and even perform financial tasks such as buying funds.
With the gradual maturity of AI technology, not only Ant Group, but also many technology companies are intensively increasing their investment in agents. However, it should be noted that due to the strong entry attribute of Agent Assistant, most enterprises focus on a single product to avoid resource dispersion and overlapping positioning.
In contrast, Alibaba has built AI assistants such as Qianwen, Lingguang and Quark, and now actively promotes Alipay to access the Agent, which is extremely abnormal.
This is undoubtedly due to Alibaba’s vast business territory, with many products catering to different user needs and application scenarios; On the other hand, it is also directly related to the differentiated product characteristics of Alipay. As a payment tool, Alipay highly matches the transaction demand generated by the agent’s landing, so it needs targeted layout.
Lack of social relationship chain, Alipay is eager for new technology to break the situation
As Alibaba’s main e-commerce business is closer to the payment link, Alipay has a strong first mover advantage. At the beginning of the outbreak of mobile Internet, it became the top third-party payment platform in China. According to the statistics of iResearch, in 2014, Alipay accounted for 82.8% of China’s Internet third-party payment market, ranking first.
According to the above trend, Alipay is likely to become the dominant player in China’s mobile payment track. However, during the Spring Festival of 2015, WeChat payment “stole 500 million yuan of cash red envelopes” by “shaking”, which greatly diverted Alipay’s market influence.
Image source: iResearch Consulting
According to iResearch, in 2015, the market share of Alipay in China’s Internet third-party payment market fell to 47.5%, while that of Tencent Tenpay rose to 20%.
In order to counter WeChat payment, Alipay has successively launched differentiated services such as Jiwufu, Ant Forest and “Touch” payment in recent years, and frequently launched large-scale marketing activities. Although these services and activities have improved the user stickiness of Alipay to a certain extent, they have not rewritten the competition pattern of China’s Internet third-party payment market.
According to the data disclosed by the China Payment and Clearing Association, in 2024, the market share of Alipay and WeChat payment in China’s Internet third-party payment market will be 45.7% and 41.8%, respectively, in terms of transaction amount.
Source: Alipay
You know, since the birth of WeChat Red Packet, WeChat has not launched a new form of payment for many years, and still focuses on two-dimensional code payment, which is far less excellent than Alipay’s “touch” payment.
The reason why WeChat Pay has strong vitality is mainly because it relies on WeChat’s vast social network, which can be deeply linked to users’ daily communication scenarios, naturally possessing higher usage frequency and user stickiness.
In contrast, Alipay only locates the “wallet”, and the use scenario is relatively simple, so it is naturally difficult to compete positively with WeChat payment in terms of user activity and use frequency.
However, just because Alipay cannot “lie down” on the social relationship chain like WeChat payment, Alipay has always maintained a strong sense of crisis and innovation drive. With the gradual maturity of AI technology, Alipay has finally found a new starting point.
In the AI era, Alipay and WeChat meet again
As Nvidia founder and CEO Huang Renxun said, ‘Agentic AI has arrived.’. Computers no longer run applications, but rather run AI agents. ”In order to create higher user value, technology companies are promoting the upgrade of their AI assistants from Chatbots that can chat to Agents that can handle tasks since 2025.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, the AI version of Alipay will subvert the original interaction system, which can access the native AI interface with one click, and rely on the agent assistant named “A Bao” to achieve intelligence from service to fund management.
When using it specifically, users can engage in natural language conversations with “Abao” and issue commands such as hailing a taxi, ordering coffee, and ordering takeout. After obtaining user authorization, “Abao” can even complete financial management tasks such as selecting funds and managing investment accounts.
It is worth noting that due to the huge commercial value of Agent, not only Alipay is undergoing AI transformation, but WeChat is also actively adding AI agents.
Image source: WeChat developer
On June 8, 2026, the official WeChat official account of WeChat developers released the Guidelines on Developers’ Access to the WeChat AI Ecology, confirming that WeChat AI has opened internal testing.
According to sources familiar with the matter cited by the Financial Times, the WeChat Agent will be hidden on the left side of the WeChat chat main interface and can be accessed by swiping to the right. After the user issues specific instructions through natural language, the intelligent agent can call the WeChat mini program to execute the corresponding tasks.
Although the product forms are highly similar, there is a significant gap between the ecological resources of Alipay and WeChat. According to data disclosed by the Aladdin Research Institute, as of Q1 2026, the total number of mini programs on the Chinese internet is about 12 million, of which about 8.4 million are WeChat mini programs, accounting for 70%; Alipay has about 1.8 million applets, accounting for only 15%.
Image source: QuestMobile
In an interview with LatePost, a WeChat insider said that the natural advantage of WeChat Agent is the highly prosperous mini program ecosystem. “These developers are likely to have little motivation to go to a new platform, sign a new agreement, and build a new system
Obviously, although it has entered a new era of AI, Alipay still needs to face the systemic weaknesses because the capability boundary of the agent is closely related to the ecological resources of the mobile Internet.
Considering that the core demand of users to use the agent is not simply to obtain information, but to complete specific tasks efficiently, and the ecological capacity is insufficient, which indicates that Alipay Agent is difficult to compete with WeChat in the short term.
Beyond the entrance, AI infrastructure holds greater strategic value
Due to its strong “wallet” attribute, Alipay did not bet all its chips on the competition for agent entrance, but actively launched AI payment solutions such as AI payment, AI collection and Token Pay as a service provider.
Source: Alipay
At the AI Payment Ecology Conference held at the end of May 2026, Han Xinyi, CEO of Ant Group, said to the public that “the nature of business has not changed in the AI era, but the new role of agents has restructured everything. Alipay has built a new AI payment service based on its technology accumulation and business knowledge over the past 22 years to help accelerate the development of the new business ecology. ”
In short, Alipay not only wants to become the core portal of the AI era by relying on the agent, but also hopes to become the payment “infrastructure” of the AI era by meeting the transaction needs of agents.
For example, at present, Alipay AI payment has supported 95% of the general agent framework, covering AI assistants, smart devices, smart cockpit and other products. By May 2026, Alipay had completed 300 million AI payments.
From the perspective of AI technology evolution, Alipay’s choice is quite insightful. At present, the product form, interaction mode, and ecological pattern of agents have not been finalized, and the competition for AI entry is still full of variables. By comparison, payment, as one of the most fundamental service capabilities of the digital economy, has stronger certainty and irreplaceability.
As the agent gradually matures, users may not actively choose a certain payment tool, but directly assign tasks to the agent, which will automatically complete the screening, ordering, payment and other processes.
In this context, being the first platform to become the underlying payment infrastructure for agents has a greater chance of winning the “ticket” of the AI era. From this point of view, Alipay’s role of “infrastructure” in advance card payment is highly forward-looking.
Image source: Honor
In fact, not only Alipay, but also WeChat has seen the important strategic value of AI’s “infrastructure”. Recently, WeChat has not only tested agents within the platform, but also collaborated with smartphone manufacturers such as Huawei, Honor, and Xiaomi to support A2A interoperability. The AI assistant of the mobile system can directly call WeChat to send messages.
It should be noted that in order to maintain the core asset of the social relationship chain, WeChat has previously opened up key capabilities to external platforms and even repeatedly blocked products that have crossed boundaries.
A typical example is the Doubao mobile phone, which was blocked by WeChat a few days after its launch due to its ability to simulate clicking technology through GUI to control software.
In the era of Agent, WeChat actively supports A2A interoperability, indicating that it not only wants to become an entrance, but also hopes to embed the social relationship chain that has been accumulated for more than ten years into the Agent collaboration network. In this way, regardless of which Agent tool users use to perform tasks, WeChat has the opportunity to continue playing the core hub connecting people and services.
Image source: WeChat
After understanding the strategic value of AI infrastructure, WeChat’s A2A interoperability has not stopped at socializing, but is also extending towards payments. In April 2026, WeChat Pay released the “AI Access Toolbox”, which includes three core modules: Skill Skill Pack, AI Friendly Document, and AI Friendly API, making it convenient for developers to integrate AI products into WeChat Pay.
From this point of view, Alipay and WeChat payment have once again become competitors with the successive launch of AI payment “infrastructure”. However, due to its first mover advantage and strong payment attributes, Alipay occupies a relatively active position in the competition of payment “infrastructure”.
In the future, it remains to be seen who Alipay and WeChat payment can become the payment infrastructure in the AI era. But what can be certain is that as agents take over more and more transaction and service processes, platforms that master underlying payment tools will have stronger long-term competitiveness than platforms that simply occupy traffic entrances.
相关文章
