Ant Group merges Alipay and Zhima Credit units to focus on AI agent commerce

Ant Group has announced a major organizational restructuring, merging its Digital Payment Business Group, Alipay Business Group, and Zhima Credit Business Group into a single, unified Alipay Business Group. This consolidation marks a strategic shift toward ‘agentic commerce,’ a model where AI agents perform tasks such as searching for products, making decisions, and executing transactions on behalf of users.

CEO Cyril Han Xinyi noted that while the industry is entering a phase of potential explosive growth, the actual rollout of agentic commerce has been slower than previously forecasted. The restructuring aims to eliminate silos between payment rails, credit scoring, and digital services, creating a cohesive environment for AI-driven commerce. This move effectively brings the entire transaction lifecycle—from user intent and authorization to payment and credit verification—under a single management structure.

Wu Minzhi has been appointed as the president of the new Alipay Business Group while maintaining her role as Ant Group’s Chief People Officer. The company has already begun deploying supporting technologies, including the ‘Ah Bao’ AI assistant and the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), to facilitate seamless interactions across various devices and platforms.