Alipay's Stance: Stablecoins Enter AI

Ant Group is laying out its AI payment strategy for Alipay in mainland China while advancing stablecoin-related initiatives in Hong Kong.

Written by: Conflux

At the recent China Payment and Clearing Forum, Ant Group's CEO and Alipay Chairman, Han Xinyi, summarized the exploration paths for global AI payments into four categories: payment technology platforms represented by Stripe, cryptocurrency companies represented by Circle and Coinbase, traditional card organizations represented by Visa and Mastercard, and AI platforms represented by Google and OpenAI.

It sounds like a neutral industry scan. However, a closer look at the second category—"using cryptocurrency as a payment medium to directly support automated payment scenarios between machines"—contrasts sharply with the cautious tone that has characterized domestic discussions on cryptocurrency over the past year, making this statement quite significant.

A leader of a company that holds the largest mobile payment gateway in China is discussing such assets as a norm in the global industry landscape on a domestic platform—this feels more like a cautious signal release rather than a casual mention.

The Truth Behind 300 Million Transactions

To understand the weight of this statement, one must first look at how much Ant has bet on AI payments.

As of the end of May 2026, Alipay's AI payment transactions have exceeded 300 million, covering 95% of mainstream general-purpose intelligent agent frameworks, from smart devices like Qianwen and Rokid to intelligent cockpits from Li Auto, Chery, and Geely, and AI tool platforms like Qoder and Koudi. Han Xinyi summarized this system as "intelligent agents are the execution carriers, and Tokens are the value carriers"—in other words, what Ant aims to create is not a single AI payment product but a complete AI-native payment infrastructure.

Among the four paths he outlined, the one that has truly scaled in the new "machine-to-machine" scenario is precisely the second category. According to data jointly released by Keyrock and Coinbase, from May 2025 to April 2026, on-chain AI agents completed approximately 176 million transactions, with an average transaction amount of only $0.31 to $0.48, of which about 76% were below Visa's fixed fee threshold of $0.30—traditional card systems cannot operate in such high-frequency, low-value scenarios, and only stablecoins with near-zero settlement costs can accommodate this.

This is what Han Xinyi truly meant: it is not that he endorses the ideology of cryptocurrency, but rather that he acknowledges an ongoing infrastructural reality—automated micro-payments between AIs can currently only be efficiently executed on the stablecoin track.

Payment Gateways Are Being Rearranged

The arrangement of the four paths itself is a reordering of power dynamics.

The fourth category represented by Google and OpenAI is vying for discourse power at the protocol layer. The AP2 (Agent Payment Protocol) led by Google has already brought in over 60 partners, including Mastercard, PayPal, and Coinbase; the ACP (Agent Commerce Protocol) jointly launched by OpenAI and Stripe focuses on the checkout process; and the x402 protocol initiated by Coinbase and now managed by an independent foundation revives the long-dormant HTTP 402 status code, specifically supporting payments from AI agents to other agents, applications, and services.

Visa and Mastercard are not sitting idly either—Visa launched its own Smart Business Connection Protocol in April 2026, and Mastercard introduced the Agent Pay framework, both aiming to solidify the "card organization" path. However, it is paradoxical that when Han Xinyi places "cryptocurrency payments" and "traditional card organizations" as two equally viable options in a four-way choice, the previously implicit status of card organizations as a "default presence that does not need to be mentioned separately" has begun to be subtly rewritten by this quadripartite classification.

Meanwhile, Ant is advancing compliant layouts in both mainland China and Hong Kong at different paces, but within their respective regulatory frameworks. In Alipay's main business, AI payments follow a conversational service route like "Abao," emphasizing that user fund changes still require personal confirmation, and the current product system does not involve stablecoin-related functions. On the other hand, although Ant International did not make the first batch of license lists issued under Hong Kong's Stablecoin Regulation in April 2026, it has previously stated its intention to invest in the real and reliable large-scale application of "AI, blockchain, and stablecoin innovations." Given Ant's consistent investment pace in cross-border payments and blockchain, this line is likely still in progress.

Han Xinyi's inclusion of cryptocurrency as one of the legitimate paths resonates with another line of business that Ant is pursuing.

AI Payment Scenarios Priced in USD

What truly determines the weight is the data: currently, the stablecoins that are genuinely scaling in AI payment scenarios are predominantly priced in USD. Recent data released by Coinbase shows that its x402 protocol has processed over 205 million transactions, with a transaction volume of $53 million, covering 200,000 sellers; currently, USDC accounts for 99% of on-chain agent commercial transactions, and x402 accounts for 97% of agent financial protocol usage. Coupled with the previously mentioned 176 million on-chain AI agent transactions from Keyrock and Coinbase, these also primarily occur on the USD stablecoin track. Among the global supply of $315 billion in stablecoins, USD stablecoins account for over 90%.

This is also one of the reasons why Hong Kong has been intensively promoting HKD stablecoins over the past two years: rather than allowing USD stablecoins to dominate in cross-border payments, RWA asset tokenization, and other new scenarios, it is better to lay the groundwork for HKD's settlement track in advance to capture a larger share.

Years of Progress to the AI Era

The ability of stablecoins to scale in machine-to-machine payment scenarios is backed by a long-standing mainline. Visa began piloting settlements with USDC for its collaboration with Crypto.com as early as 2021; in 2023, PayPal issued its own USD stablecoin PYUSD, becoming one of the first mainstream payment companies to directly issue a coin. In 2025, the U.S. Congress passed the GENIUS Act, establishing a federal regulatory framework for USD stablecoins for the first time, and Visa and Mastercard subsequently incorporated stablecoins into their core settlement systems—by December 2025, Visa officially launched USDC settlements in the U.S., achieving an annual settlement scale of several billion dollars.

In the same year, the AP2 protocol led by Google was announced, bringing in over 60 partners including Mastercard, PayPal, and Coinbase; Coinbase's x402 protocol also launched that year, specifically targeting automated payment scenarios between agents, reaching over 200 million transactions by 2026. In other words, the explosive growth of AI payments is built on the stablecoin infrastructure that has already been validated in cross-border settlements and institutional layers over the past few years, rather than emerging from nowhere.

Ant is Truly Competing for the Next Card

Ant is simultaneously providing compliant AI payment services in mainland China through Alipay while queuing to apply for stablecoin licenses in Hong Kong through Ant International—both paths operate within their respective regulatory frameworks, representing a pragmatic business strategy: the two lines do not conflict, and both sides have secured their entry tickets in advance. However, the ultimate outcome of AI payments is likely not to be "four paths operating independently," but rather a certain protocol or currency that will first successfully navigate the "machine-to-machine" scenario and then reverse-engineer access to other scenarios.

If such integration occurs, stablecoins are currently one of the frontrunners. Most stablecoins operating in the Agent-to-Agent scenario are still denominated in USD. Whether HKD stablecoins can carve out a niche in this new track largely depends on how quickly they can obtain licenses and how broadly they can establish scenarios. By then, whether Ant can secure a license in Hong Kong may determine its position in the next round of the global payment landscape more than the 300 million AI payment transactions it has accumulated in Alipay. This question, Han Xinyi did not answer.