Ant International is advancing its role in digital financial infrastructure for emerging markets after supporting over 2 billion cross-border transactions in 2025, covering Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. The core focus lies in expanding AI-driven financial and digital commerce solutions that unlock growth opportunities for entrepreneurs, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which constitute more than 90% of its global customer base exceeding 150 million users.
While many may be unfamiliar with Ant Group, the name Alipay is widely recognized as a popular app for online shopping in China or for payments during international travel. In reality, Alipay is only the starting point of a fintech empire that has evolved into Ant Group (formerly Ant Financial Services Group).
As the business expanded, Ant Group’s role transformed from an "app provider" to a creator of financial infrastructure encompassing payments, lending, risk management, and cross-border trade connectivity. Internationally, Ant Group spun off its overseas operations into Ant International, which focuses exclusively on expansion outside China.
Under Ant International, the company now offers not just Alipay but a suite of platforms and solutions working together—from end users and merchants to global entrepreneurs—built around four main pillars:
Alipay+ serves as an international digital wallet gateway. Its significance lies not only in cross-border payments but in enabling interoperability among e-wallets, super apps, national QR code systems, and card networks.
In Southeast Asia, Alipay+ is connected to the national QR codes of five countries: Singapore’s SGQR, Malaysia’s PayNet, South Korea’s ZeroPay, Cambodia’s KHQR, and Sri Lanka’s LankaPay. This allows Alipay+ users to easily pay merchants worldwide by scanning a QR code. Currently, Alipay+ links over 1.8 billion user accounts from 40 partners with merchants across more than 100 global markets.
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Antom is a merchant-side payment acceptance platform designed to simplify cross-channel and cross-border payments. Its standout feature is the use of AI, such as Antom Copilot, an intelligent assistant that can reduce payment system integration time by up to 95%. Additionally, its Payment Orchestration & Smart Routing system selects the payment route with the highest real-time success rate.
Access to funding remains a major bottleneck for SMEs in emerging markets. Bettr functions as embedded finance infrastructure offering lending technology via digital platforms. This model enables lending where real data exists—whether on e-wallets or super apps—lowering risk costs and expanding financial access for small entrepreneurs. Bettr currently supports over 30 million users and has expanded into Latin America through investment in R2, a leading embedded lending infrastructure provider in the region.
WorldFirst offers comprehensive global business account solutions for receiving and making payments and managing funds across borders within a single account. It serves over 1.2 million customers worldwide, supports transactions in more than 210 countries, over 100 currencies, and integrates with more than 130 e-commerce platforms. This enables SMEs and online businesses to trade internationally without opening multiple accounts or dealing with multiple banks.
These factors allow Ant International to handle over 2 billion digital transactions annually, playing a vital role in emerging markets worldwide. Moreover, this reflects a shift in fintech growth centers from developed countries toward "emerging markets."
Reviewing the evolution of the business and innovations over the past year, Glass Feigin, President of Ant International, revealed that when access must translate into real growth, Ant International views SMEs as the backbone of emerging market economies. The company currently serves more than 150 million entrepreneurs worldwide, with 90% being small and medium-sized enterprises.
However, the main challenges SMEs face include fragmented payment systems, limited access to credit, high cross-border transaction costs, and technological complexities beyond the capacity of small businesses.
Therefore, Ant International is committed to supporting SMEs through payment services built on the infrastructure of Alipay+, 2C2P, and Antom; digital banking and lending via Bettr’s embedded finance model; and digital accounts with risk management and growth tools from WorldFirst, which facilitates rapidly growing cross-border trade. All these are designed to operate seamlessly in the background without burdening entrepreneurs, especially in emerging markets where SMEs often lack dedicated IT or large finance departments and must manage multiple tasks simultaneously.
Regarding platform technology, Ant International has enhanced cross-border remittance efficiency by processing blockchain transactions exceeding USD 600 billion, operating 24/7, with over 95% of transactions settled within the same day. Additionally, Ant International and SWIFT recently pioneered the first Bank-to-Wallet payment method, allowing bank customers worldwide to send money directly to digital wallets conveniently.
For Thailand, Feigin stated that during its expansion outside China, Thailand was among the first markets where Ant International chose to invest and develop payment infrastructure, starting with Alipay and expanding to other services. Thailand is seen as a market with strong SMEs and widespread digital payment systems, especially with rapidly developing banks and fintech companies.
At the same time, many SMEs and micro-entrepreneurs still lack true access to financial services, particularly in credit products aligned with digital behaviors, multi-channel money management tools, and business expansion beyond borders.
From being recognized mainly as a payment app for Chinese tourists, Thailand has become a strategic market for Alipay+, the main operational base for 2C2P by Antom, and a testing ground for AI fintech solutions for SMEs and global organizations.
Currently, Ant International is not just a payment service provider but is positioning itself as a “global financial infrastructure” that enables SMEs and small merchants worldwide to overcome traditional barriers related to capital, technology, and business borders, allowing them to grow within a unified global economic framework alongside international players.
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