Ant Group CEO: AI Agents Still Face a Chicken-and-Egg Problem in Commerce

At the 2026 Inclusion Bund Conference main forum roundtable in Shanghai, Ant Group CEO Han Xinyi joined executives from Mastercard, OPPO, and Alibaba to discuss how AI agents are entering shopping and payment scenarios.

Han said the supply and demand sides of AI agents have not yet formed a positive cycle. Users want to use them, but merchants lack good agent services. Merchants see few users, so they hesitate to invest in development. This creates a chicken-and-egg situation. He described Ant's role as a catalyst, solving safety and trust issues and driving the ecosystem flywheel.

He expects commercial traffic to shift from time spent to user intent. Users may simply express needs, and personal assistant agents will match services and complete transactions. Alipay's Abao will launch incentive policies to support developers.

On trust, Han proposed building systems for authorization, identity verification, agent capability assessment, fund security, and traceable auditing so users feel safe letting agents execute tasks and payments.