❯ Alipay Launches Merchant Agent Platform; Alibaba Hong Kong Shares Rise as Much as 5% Intraday

LAUNCHAlipay has launched a full-stack agentic commerce platform for merchants, helping businesses automate operational tasks with AI agents. Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose as much as 5% on the day. According to Bloomberg, the stock has climbed more than 40% since its June low. Ant Group CEO Han Xinyi said Alipay aims to help build a new generation of AI services and support the growth of agent commerce.

CAPABILITIESThe platform splits merchants into two tiers by digital maturity: for those digitized but without AI services, the system can convert existing pages, products, and service flows directly into agent-callable skills and MCP tools; for those that already have AI services, it provides a four-piece toolkit covering agent creation, skill orchestration, task execution, and operations management. This is not Alipay’s first move in this space — at the earlier “Tap” ecosystem conference, millions of offline devices were upgraded to “Tap Device Agents,” alongside a service platform for SMBs and an open foundation for developers.

CROSS-DEVICEMore critical is the outward connection layer. The new platform plugs into the “Abao” ecosystem via Alipay’s AHA protocol, letting merchant services reach beyond Alipay’s own users — phones, cars, AI glasses, and other AI applications. As of August, Abao has connected five major phone brands (with a combined market share above 70%) and 16 automakers. For SMBs, the old playbook was to build a mini-program first; this platform pushes the integration priority to the other end — whether the service can be invoked by someone else’s agent.

▪ SIGNALWhat Alipay is really selling is not the agent itself, but an interface slot that lets merchant services be summoned by any AI assistant.