Agentic commerce is accelerating, and U.S. merchants are turning to Asia-Pacific fintech to compete for the world's fastest growing market.
When artificial intelligence (AI) agents can independently browse, compare options, and complete purchases on a consumer's behalf, all without human input, the rules of global commerce change overnight. This shift, known as agentic commerce, is already here and reshaping how American businesses approach international growth, particularly in Asia.
At the Antom U.S. Merchant Summit in San Francisco last month, executives from
The stakes are significant in Asia. The continent already accounts for 27.4% of U.S. exports, according to federal data, and its influence is only growing. By the 2030s, one in two consumer transactions worldwide is expected to take place in Asia. The Asia-Pacific market is moving fastest on AI-driven commerce, capturing 24.5% of global agentic commerce revenue in 2025, making it the world's fastest-growing market for this emerging transaction model.
This positions Asia as a natural pilot region for the future of agentic commerce. The challenge is that many global merchants are only just learning to navigate Asia's complex digital payments ecosystem, with digital wallets at their center. Digital wallets already dominate across both e-commerce and point-of-sale in Asia and are expected to be the primary payment rail for agentic transactions.
Global merchants have their work cut out for them trying to navigate the digital payments ecosystem in Asia. The region is fragmented across hundreds of local digital wallets and more than a dozen national payment schemes such as India's UPI, Singapore's SGQR, and Thailand's PromptPay among others. Offering localized options is no longer optional; the absence of a preferred wallet triggers immediate cart abandonment.
This is typically where global merchants work with partners such as Ant International, a Singapore-headquartered global payment and fintech solutions provider. Through Antom, its digital merchant payment services brand, global merchants have access to more than 300 payment methods all through a single interaction point. This offering allows merchants access to payment options like credit cards, local wallets, and bank transfers across more than 200 markets, helping to bridge the fragmented payments ecosystem in Asia and other regions.
The rise of AI-assisted shopping introduces additional complexity. When an AI agent initiates a transaction autonomously, questions around accountability, brand integrity, and fraud prevention become paramount. Both merchants and consumers need assurance that agent-driven payments are secure, reliable and verifiable.
Financial AI partnerships are critical to addressing this "trust gap," according to Gary Liu, CEO of Antom and Senior Vice President of Ant International. "For global merchants, success across international markets demands a partner that delivers both deep digital wallet excellence and comprehensive coverage of payment methods, utilizing a sophisticated AI 'trust layer' to turn transactional friction into seamless, agent-led growth."
Early partnerships are already producing results that are setting the foundation for the future of agentic commerce. Ant International is collaborating on the launch of Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open standard for agentic commerce that works across the entire shopping journey, from discovery and buying to post-purchase support. A separate partnership with Visa focuses on advanced authentication and tokenization to secure agentic commerce.
"This provides the secure infrastructure required for consumers to move from discovery to confidently executing autonomous transactions," said Rubail Birwadker, SVP and Global Head of Growth Products and Strategic Partnerships at Visa.
The model of combining regional expertise, a unified integration layer, and financial AI collaboration is already translating into expansion. At Ant International's San Francisco summit, Adobe shared that it was able to offer seven new alternative payment methods and accelerate its expansion into Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, through a partnership with Antom.
As the global payments landscape evolves with agentic commerce, successful international growth will depend on both technological agility and collaboration. By working with partners like Ant International, global merchants are not only able to stay ahead of fundamental technological evolutions and shifting consumer patterns but can actually tap into them and use these trends to power their global growth.
