Ant International has tied management performance reviews to sustainability metrics for the first time, the company said yesterday (Monday) as it published its second annual sustainability report alongside fresh disclosures on its small-business reach and artificial intelligence push.
The report broke out reach across the firm's main services.
Alipay+ and Antom, under Global Payment pillars, now connect 2 billion user accounts globally to over 150 million merchants. This ecosystem of interoperability links up more than 10 national QR systems and supports 300+ payment methods in over 220 markets, including all card schemes, and 50 digital wallets, bank apps and BNPL apps, the company said.
Ant International also noted that its Global Account and Embedded Finance services - WorldFirst and Bettr, support over 1.6 million SMEs, and provide credit access to about 30 million micro- and small-sized businesses and underserved users.
Executive Pay Linked to Sustainability Targets
Chairman Eric Jing said the firm has folded sustainability outcomes into the framework used to evaluate management's performance, putting them alongside revenue growth and operational efficiency.
"Accountability must be structural, not aspirational," Jing said in the report.
The disclosure goes further than most global payments rivals on linking executive pay to ESG outcomes, including Wise, which has built its B2B platform around SME and freelancer clients but has not made similar pay-link commitments.
CEO Peng Yang and President Douglas Feagin said in a joint statement that "doing great by doing good should be our strategic differentiator."
AI Push Centers on Small Business Tools
A large portion of the report is given over to artificial intelligence products. Antom released an updated version of its Copilot tool to automate payment integration, onboarding and chargeback work, and launched an agentic payment product that the firm says lets AI agents initiate card and alternative-method transactions through a mandate model.
Other launches include the GenAI Cockpit, a FinAI-as-a-Service platform that Ant International said has been adopted by Malaysia's TNG eWallet and Pakistan's easypaisa.
According to the company, its open-sourced AI foreign exchange tool delivers forecasts with up to 93% accuracy across volatile currency pairs.
EPOS360, an AI-powered platform covering finance and business operations for micro-merchants, has been rolled out in Southeast Asia, the firm said.
Compliance Build-Out
Ant International said it spent 2025 building out compliance and security infrastructure, citing a transformer model called SHIELD that the firm says has 7 billion parameters and identifies high-risk transactions with more than 95% precision. The tool also lifts payment success rates by up to 13.5%.
Singapore's Personal Data Protection Commission cited Alipay+'s Privacy Enhancing Technology program in its practical guidance for industry, Ant International noted.
The firm has also been using digital platforms to drive public participation in sustainability projects. AlipayHK, which runs a digital donation portal that lets users contribute to relief efforts, channeled HK$200 million from 450,000 users in three days after a Tai Po fire, the report said.
Alipay+ began supporting New York Liberty, the WNBA champion team on Liberty Sneaker Drives for underprivileged groups, Math Hoops project to build youth skills, and Threes for Trees project in NYC and Brooklyn.
