Where is AI paying off in payments? In improving what merchants already do: Ant International exec

AI shopping agents may be grabbing headlines, but the bigger shift could be unfolding behind the shopfront.

That is according to Gary Liu, senior vice-president of Singapore-based Ant International, the global arm of Chinese fintech firm Ant Group. He is also the chief executive officer of Antom, a merchant payment and digitisation services provider under Ant International.

Over 90 per cent of AI applications in payments today improve tasks merchants already perform, Liu observed.

Liu said: “This is where AI is delivering the most immediate and measurable value for merchants.”

It prompted Ant International to launch full-stack, AI-native solutions for businesses in September 2026, he said, with AI built into every part to support businesses’ end-to-end needs.

An example is its Antom SmartDispute, which guides merchants on chargeback dispute and appeal strategies, said Liu. Since its July 2025 launch, Antom merchants won 41.8 per cent of disputes on average, compared with 24.5 per cent for those who do not use.

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A chargeback occurs when a cardholder asks their bank to reverse a transaction with a merchant to reclaim funds.

The Antom AutoDispute analyses, gathers evidence, drafts, and submits appeals. It helped merchants recover an average of 18 per cent of chargeback losses, Liu added.

Seizing the opportunity

Artificial intelligence helped with 81.4 per cent of Antom merchants’ payment tasks in the last year, Liu said.

Agentic commerce, where an AI agent acts on a shopper’s behalf across the shopping journey, represents a much smaller share. But Liu projected significant growth, with adoption varying by merchant size. (See box below)

He added that Ant International currently helps merchants use shopping agents and provides fund guarantee against risks tied to these bots.

Agents could mediate as much as US$3 trillion (S$3.8 trillion) to US$5 trillion of global consumer trade by 2030, an October 2025 report by US-based consultancy firm McKinsey projected.

To get there, the industry needs a shared framework to verify and hold AI agents accountable, Liu said. This would allow payment networks, marketplaces and other industry players to trust agents to transact without repeated checks while shopping.

The work has begun. In September 2026, Ant International, and payment networks Mastercard and Visa announced that they were developing common standards to identify and verify AI agents that can buy on users’ behalf.

They did so through BuildFin.ai, a Monetary Authority of Singapore-led initiative for financial institutions, tech firms and research institutes to co-develop AI solutions that meet regulatory requirements.

This was produced in partnership with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Global Finance & Technology Network.

For more stories, go to bt.sg/sff26