Ant Group to Launch Incentive Policies for Building an AI Agent Ecosystem

At the Inclusion Conference, Ant Group CEO Han Xinyi announced that Alipay's "Abao" platform will launch incentive policies to support developers and connect user demand with AI agent services. He highlighted that commercial traffic is shifting from user attention duration to intent matching, positioning Ant as a catalyst for agentic commerce. This signals a strategic push by major fintech leaders to establish trust infrastructure and commercial frameworks for AI agents acting as transaction entities. As AI shifts e-commerce from traditional attention-based advertising to intent-driven execution, platforms that resolve security, identity, and accountability challenges will lead the next generation of digital payments. Ant Group proposed a trust framework covering user authorization, identity verification (KYC, KYB, and "Know Your Agent"), agent capability evaluation, anti-fraud controls, and transactional auditability. The incentives aim to solve a "chicken-and-egg" problem where merchants hesitate to develop agents without active users, while users lack access to useful agent services.