How Tokenization and Agentic Pay Will Transform Payments

The New Generation Of Payment Solutions

Payment solutions are a foundation of the modern financial system. They started to digitalize further with the onset of the Internet and payment companies like PayPal (PYPL -3.34%), Stripe (private), and Wise (WISE.L).

While these technologies mostly solved the issue of secure online payments, they are not ideal. Fees can be somewhat high, and money transfers, especially international payments, can be slow and cumbersome.

The emergence of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies has always carried the promise to change how money works. Not only could it represent truly decentralized money, not tied to any specific nation state or company, but it could also completely change how transactions are registered, performed, and recorded.

For now, most cryptocurrencies have been somewhat volatile in value when compared to real assets or government-issued fiat currencies. This has somewhat hindered their adoption for everyday transactions, with a lot of the activity around crypto focusing on a role as a store of value instead (for example, the view of Bitcoin being “digital gold”).

A solution developed by the crypto community to create a blockchain-based currency closer to everyday dollars, yen, yuan, and euros is the stablecoin. They are cryptocurrencies designed to represent a 1-to-1 equivalent to a fiat currency.

This way, stablecoins can be used in the same way as money on a traditional bank account or credit card can be used, but with all the advantages of blockchain technology: immutability, almost instant transfer, low fees, etc.

Tokenization

How Tokenized Payments Work (And Why They Matter)

New progress is being made in payment technology, which will likely be as transformative as the arrival of online payment was.

The first one is “tokenization”, which converts currencies or assets into transferable digital tokens. While we discuss here the application of tokenization to payments, it can also be deployed to financial assets like stocks.

This type of payment system would resemble stablecoins but could be specific to each e-commerce company or payment system, rather than relying on a separate stablecoin provider.

The key advantage would be the ability to allow cross-border transfers within a unified payment system.

“Users from different countries shouldn’t need different platforms just to move money.

So when the U.S. buyers or euro buyers pay a certain amount of euros, it doesn’t need to go around different banks around the world, but it actually is using tokenization and blockchain,” Zhang said.

Kuo Zhang – president of Alibaba.com

Alibaba’s Tokenization Progress

Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce and cloud computing giant, is leveraging JP Morgan’s (JPM -1.61%) tokenization technology to move its payment solution to the next level.

The move should speed up transactions and reduce the number of intermediaries needed for international payments.

In today’s cross-border trade, a U.S. buyer sending dollars to a Chinese supplier may see funds routed through several banks and undergo multiple currency conversions, adding both time and cost.

With tokenized currency, a digital version of that dollar could be transferred directly over a blockchain-based system, bypassing the intermediaries.

JP Morgan tokenization relies on its deposit token, JPMD. JPM Coin is a deposit token, backed 1:1 by bank deposits, used strictly by institutional clients for instant settlement.

As it is issued on a public network, there are fewer restrictions on who can hold the token, with JPMorgan’s institutional clients potentially able to offer the use of JPMD to their own customers.
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Where Alibaba Is Heading With Digital Tokens and Stablecoins

Alibaba’s recent declaration on tokenization follows its announcement in June 2025 that the Ant Group, the financial subsidiary of Alibaba, announced plans to obtain licenses to issue stablecoins in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Alibaba’s current focus is on bank-issued digital tokens, rather than stablecoins, for regulatory and operational clarity.

The company declared that it will also evaluate the possibility of using stablecoins after it has been testing tokenized transactions.

Agentic Pay

How AI Agents Will Handle Payments Automatically

Besides tokenization, the other frontier in the payment system is to empower AI agents to transfer money semi-independently.

AI agents are the next step of AI development, moving from generalist models to models dedicated to specific applications and needs. You can read more about the concept in our article “AI’s Killer App: How AI Agents Could Change Everything”.

The idea is that an AI agent could perform not only search, but also transactions on the demand of a user, buying goods or services, without the user having to directly perform the payment themselves, entering a password, etc.

Source: Department Of Products

In 2025, companies like MasterCard (MA -0.47%) have been pushing for new Agentic Pay technology.

“A small textile enterprise will be able to use its AI agent to handle sourcing, optimize payment terms, and manage logistics with an international supplier.

From there, the AI agent can complete the cross-border purchase using a Mastercard virtual card.”

Alibaba’s B2B Agentic Pay

In 2024, Alibaba introduced Accio, its AI-based B2B search engine.

On November 13^th, 2025, Alibaba unveiled a new AI Mode for Accio, a feature that embeds agentic artificial intelligence into the sourcing workflow.

This is important for the company to preserve its current momentum, as it registered a 50% increase in active suppliers worldwide the same year.

“There are a lot of good products worldwide that can contribute to the global supply chain as well, and we are investing heavily in that part.

We feel the urgency to use AI to redesign how people do global trade. We think it’s going to be a paradigm shift for e-commerce for B2B.”

Kuo Zhang – president of Alibaba.com

This would add agentic pay to the already growing offer of agentic search proposed by Alibaba. It builds on Alibaba’s rollout of “deep search,” which uses LLMs (Large Language Models) to interpret complex product descriptions and supplement keyword search.

“AI is no longer a supplementary tool at Alibaba.com. It’s evolving into the operating system of our platform.”

Kuo Zhang – president of Alibaba.com

How Agentic AI Could Reshape Global E-Commerce

Agentic search and agentic pay are blending conversation with LLMs into real-world action, much as science-fiction authors once imagined interaction with AIs, in a conversational tone rather than computer commands.

In the long run, combined with better voice commands, we might just have a conversation with our AI agent. Instead of clicking on a keyboard and mouse, we will just ask it to buy for us what we need.

This will also create an interesting situation for sellers, as the first person to be convinced about a product will no longer be a human, but an AI.

So we might sooner or later start to see a new type of marketing, agent-targeting marketing, the way SEO (Search Engine Optimization) took over by focusing on how to “please” search engines as much as the final users.

It is also very likely that Alibaba’s own AI LLM models, Qwen2.5-Max and Qwen3, which are performing on par with other major LLMs like DeepSeek, Llama, Claude, and GPT, are going to be developed to perform especially well in this role, closing the loop in keeping customers in Alibaba’s AI ecosystem.

Source: Qwen

Conclusion

The combination of blockchain-based tokenization and agentic pay could completely change how payments are done in the future.

The agentic part means that we might in the future not even have to visit an online marketplace to buy something, but just let our personal agent, with a deep knowledge of our likes and dislikes, find the best solution and just ask for our confirmation.

It will then proceed to process the payment without any human intervention.

Meanwhile, both domestic and cross-border payments will be almost instantaneous, care little about currency conversions and interbank fees, and will be registered on an immutable ledger.

Ultimately, the adoption of agentic payment systems will be linked to our growing acceptance of AI and trusting it to act semi-autonomously, including with our own money.

And what type of payment system becomes the new dominant form, crypto, independent stablecoins, or bank deposit token, will depend on our trust in the related institutions and the importance we put on convenience and price stability.

(You can also read a more detailed analysis of Alibaba’s business and AI activities in our dedicated investment report.)