Alibaba’s cross-border e-commerce division has launched a new AI-powered subscription service to boost revenue and is considering the use of stablecoin technology to facilitate international payments, according to Alibaba.com President Kuo Zhang.
Zhang indicated that this development could involve collaborations with banking partners such as JPMorgan and reflects a broader trend among technology and financial companies to implement tokenisation solutions.
Alibaba’s Qwen AI models are now integrated across various operations, including Alibaba.com, the B2B unit that generated over $3 billion in revenue in the past fiscal year by connecting businesses with suppliers and facilitating international procurement.
On Friday, Alibaba.com rolled out ‘AI Mode,’ a new, advanced search function that allows users to analyze and compare suppliers by factors such as cost, logistics, and production capacity. Zhang noted to CNBC that the industry is experiencing a significant shift toward AI-driven search capabilities.
The intention behind these new features is to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of global trade on Alibaba’s platform. Zhang emphasized the urgency for the company to leverage AI in fundamentally redesigning the global trade process, arguing that this technological advance could mark a transformational moment for B2B e-commerce.
Although Alibaba’s B2B segment is expanding rapidly, it is still smaller than its domestic e-commerce arm and its cloud division. With the introduction of AI Mode, Alibaba seeks to diversify income through subscriptions, considering a possible subscription fee of $20 per month or $99 per year.
On the payments front, Zhang shared that Alibaba.com will launch a new feature called ‘agentic pay’ in December. This tool uses AI to automatically create contracts based on messaging exchanges between buyers and suppliers, thereby streamlining a process that was typically handled offline and then uploaded to the platform.
Given the cross-border nature of the B2B marketplace, which often involves multiple currencies, payments can be slow and involve several intermediaries. To solve this, Alibaba plans to implement tokenization—a method for digitally representing traditional money.
Zhang said that the company intends to use tokenized versions of the euro and U.S. dollar, allowing payments to bypass multiple banking intermediaries and move much faster. In practice, this would mean that payments made by buyers in the U.S. or Europe could be transferred instantly through blockchain technology.
Alibaba.com will be working with JPMorgan, which already has its own tokenization system, including the introduction of the JPMD token for cross-border B2B payments. Zhang also stated that after gaining experience with tokenized money transfers, Alibaba will review the potential for using stablecoins in the future.
