After launching its AI payment full-stack product in May and the new AI version of Alipay (referred to as "Abao") in June, on July 7, Alipay officially launched its AI Open Platform, opening up AI access capabilities to merchants, institutions, service providers, smart terminals, and large model platforms, among other ecosystem partners.

This marks an important advancement in Alipay's AI strategy, pointing toward a future transformation in human-service interaction. Users will no longer search, click, or navigate; instead, they will directly express their needs to AI, which will understand, match, and execute services and complete transactions. The intermediary between people and services will no longer be apps or other application ends, but AI intelligent agents (Agents).

Li Jun, president of the Alipay business group, said that intelligent agents will become action units with independent thinking capabilities in the AI era. The Alipay AI Open Platform aims to build a cross-end interconnected hub for intelligent agents from generation to distribution, interaction, and payment.

Differing from most platforms that build closed loops within their own ecosystems, merchants can not only access "Abao" through the Alipay AI Open Platform to provide intelligent services to 1 billion users, but also choose cross-end connectivity, using "Abao" to connect to mobile phones, car systems, AI glasses, IoT, and other smart terminals and large model platforms, achieving "one-time access, multi-terminal distribution, and unified management."

The platform is now open for invitation testing by enterprises and service providers. Brands and institutions such as KFC, Mingshi Ice City, Luckin Coffee, AutoNavi Taxi, Didi, and Wansui Mountain Martial Arts City have been among the first to join, covering high-frequency scenarios such as catering, transportation, tourism, and lifestyle services.

With the release of the industry-facing open platform, the product framework for Alipay's intelligent agent commercial network has been basically completed.

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Building an Intelligent Agent Network from Generation to Distribution

The Alipay AI Open Platform provides traditional internet merchants with an easy "toolkit" to transition into the AI operation era.

After packaging their services into AI-callable MCP plugins, Skills, or Agents, merchants can access Alipay's "Abao," and also authorize mainstream mobile AI assistants, smart car systems, IoT, third-party large model applications, and AI glasses to call these services, reaching a diverse user base across different ecosystems.

Behind these terminals are real consumer scenarios, such as: while driving, the car system AI proactively recommends nearby restaurants and completes reservations; while watching short video clips of popular movies, users can simultaneously trigger mobile terminals to book tickets.

With cross-end connectivity, the service radius of intelligent agents is greatly expanded. Merchants do not need to develop separately for each terminal— the open platform acts as an intermediary layer, with the large model handling protocol conversion and supply-demand matching uniformly.

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Operational Transformation Based on the Intelligent Agent Network

When merchants and institutions enter the service delivery stage with AI intelligent agents, operations will also change, making service collaboration based on the intelligent agent network possible.

The customer acquisition logic has changed. Customer acquisition competition will shift from competing for search entry points to how services are called. Traffic is no longer limited to a single platform but can connect services online and offline, software and hardware ends, and all users through a unified interface.

The operational process has changed. At the transaction level, intelligent agents can be authorized to perform continuous operations such as placing orders, executing, and paying. After completing a transaction, they can also analyze customer feedback and loss data, automatically analyzing and intelligently issuing discounts or recalling customers.

The R&D cost has changed. Merchants' existing assets such as mini programs are not discarded but can be smoothly upgraded into AI-callable capabilities. More importantly, one set of merchant intelligent agent services can be listed on multiple intelligent terminals. Users can call store services from any device, reducing repeated development and long-term maintenance costs.

The cooperation mechanism has changed. Based on the intelligent agent network, for user demands, large models can call different services according to execution plans to create collaborative connections, jointly building service processes for users. Each merchant service has the opportunity to participate in the same task, bringing new conversions.

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Providing Trustworthy Security Infrastructure for Interconnection of Intelligent Agent Networks

As intelligent agents move from "being able to converse" to "being able to handle tasks," they not only require model understanding capabilities but also stable connection interfaces that ensure service accessibility, trusted commercial payments, and service coordination.

It is reported that the Alipay AI Open Platform will collaborate with the Agentar intelligent agent development platform under Ant Group to provide full-stack support for merchants, including computing power scheduling, model training, and application development. In terms of service access, it offers differentiated access methods based on service MCP, Skill, or Agent, providing different tools for different types of clients: it supports quick setup with zero-code or low-code methods; for complex business scenarios, it offers industry-specific ecological solution integration and R&D implementation.

In terms of intelligent agent payment infrastructure, in April this year, Alipay released version 2.0 of the ACT protocol (Agentic Commerce Trust Protocol, Intelligent Agent Business Trust Protocol), which was jointly developed by Alipay, Zhipu, and over 20 other manufacturers under the IIFAA Internet Trusted Authentication Alliance. The new version built a payment capability framework and trust mechanism for intelligent agent interactions.

In terms of cross-end service calling, the Alipay AI Open Platform innovatively introduced the AHA interface protocol (Agent Hub Access, Multi-Agent Interconnection Collaboration Scheme), solving the problem of how mobile AI assistants can seamlessly call Alipay's vast life services across applications and devices, filling the gap in general protocols in these commercial scenarios. It is an industry standard protocol published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, "Interconnection of Artificial Intelligence Agents."

Li Jun said that the Alipay AI Open Platform is committed to providing trustworthy security infrastructure for the interconnection of future intelligent agent networks, making "people finding services" become trustworthy and visible as "services finding people."

It is reported that multiple terminal brands, including mobile phone manufacturers and smart glasses, will soon join the Alipay AI ecosystem through the "AHA" protocol. In the future, consumers will be able to use dialogue to let "Abao" complete ordering, hailing a taxi, and booking tickets regardless of whether they are at home, in a car, on a mobile phone, or on more wearable smart devices.