Agentic commerce is rapidly expanding across Asia, prompting Ant International to introduce new payment and AI tools for global merchants navigating the shift.
It involves AI agents autonomously managing the shopping process from product discovery to final settlement.
The Asia-Pacific region is emerging as a testing ground for this trend. In 2025, the region accounted for nearly a quarter of global agentic commerce revenue.
Projections from the company indicate that half of all global consumer transactions will take place in Asia by the next decade.
Digital wallets are expected to become the primary payment method for agentic commerce, driven by their widespread adoption within regional superapps and real-time payment networks.
Addressing fragmentation and trust
Despite this growth, the Asian market remains fragmented with hundreds of local digital wallets and national payment schemes.
The rise of AI in shopping has also created new challenges around accountability, brand identity, and transaction security.
“For global merchants, success across international markets demands a partner that delivers both deep digital wallet excellence and comprehensive coverage of payment methods,”
said Gary Liu, CEO of Antom and Senior Vice President of Ant International.
Through its merchant payment brand Antom, the company is supporting Adobe’s expansion into Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Antom provides a single integration point for seven alternative payment methods, allowing Adobe to use local acquiring networks rather than traditional card infrastructure.
Securing AI payments
Ant International is collaborating with major technology networks to standardise and secure these automated transactions.
The company is supporting the Universal Commerce Protocol, which was co-developed by Google and other industry leaders.
It is also partnering with Visa to develop a security framework for automated commerce.
“Our focus is on building the necessary trust layer through advanced authentication and tokenisation to secure agent-driven payments,”
said Rubail Birwadker, Senior Vice President at Visa.
Antom currently offers global merchants access to over 300 payment methods across 200 markets through a single integration.
The company recently launched EasySafePay, a risk control system that it claims provides complete account takeover protection and boosts payment conversion by 10%.
Additionally, an AI assistant named Antom Copilot handles merchant integration and chargeback disputes.
Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by Antom via Facebook
