SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 13, 2026--
Ant International supported over 2 billion digital cross-border transactions in 2025 for merchants in its core emerging markets including Southeast Asia (SEA), South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America (LATAM), as the company builds out a broader range of AI-powered digital financial and commerce solutions tailored to these regions’ diverse needs.
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WorldFirst officially launched in Thailand through its partnership with 2C2P, offering Thai SMEs the innovative unified global account service to simplify international transactions and fuel expansion
EPOS360, the pioneering AI-powered SME app, allows merchants to pair and configure EPOS360 BlueTap, a smart over-the-counter device that supports multiple payment methods in one terminal
Bettr supports digital platforms in Asia and LatAm by providing SMEs with easy access to financing
Alipay+ now connects more than 1.8 billion user accounts across 40 international payment partners to merchants across more than 100 markets
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Ant International is focused on improving access to payments, credit, digital banking and cross-border connectivity in fast-growing but fragmented digital economies. The company currently serves more than 150 million merchants globally, 90% of which are SMEs.
“In the world’s fastest growing emerging markets, real-world, trusted and scalable adoption of AI and other new technologies can unlock entirely new growth opportunities for businesses big and small,” said Douglas Feagin, President of Ant International. “It is time for fintech innovators to convert access into real growth momentum. We will work even harder to put AI-powered digital payments, financing, commerce and cross-border solutions on the ground for entrepreneurs and communities with ever lower cost and ever stronger safety and security guardrails.”
Digital Inclusion multiplies growth
Payment digitalisation and integration is crucial for business success in emerging markets:
Access to banking and financing remains a key challenge for SMEs:
Putting ontheGround Effective and Trusted Innovation
Ant International is laser-focused on building trusted FinAI technologies. In 2025, Ant international open-sourced its proprietary Falcon Time-Series Transformer (TST) AI model, which enhanced AirAsia’s FX risk management and reduced its hedging costs by up to 40%.
While investing in cutting-edge fintech innovations, Ant International is also focused on supporting effective, safe, and controlled adoption of AI in commerce to help merchants achieve measurable and scalable results.
Adoption of AI has to be premised on a strong security foundation. Ant International's SHIELD 3-in-1 risk management transformer model integrates graph, sequence and tabular modalities in protecting our clients and our businesses. It has achieved 95% precision in identifying high-risk transactions, and boosted payment success rates by as much as 13.5%.
Interoperability and Real-Time Payment (RTP)EfficiencyunlocksFuture of Commerce
Cross-border interoperability across diverse modes of payments, remains a key driver of trade, tourism and economic growth. Alipay+ currently connects more than 1.8 billion user accounts across 40 international payment partners to merchants across more than 100 markets. It is the world’s largest cross-border mobile payment public-private partnership, collaborating with 11 national QR networks globally. Through a partnership with Mastercard, Alipay+ partners – AlipayHK, GCash and Kakao Pay – can tap-to-pay via NFC across Mastercard-enabled merchants.
Ant International’s Platform Tech enables highly efficient cross-border fund transfers by processing over US$600 billion via blockchain, operating 24/7 with more than 95 percent completed on the same day. In addition, Ant International and SWIFT recently pioneered the first bank-to-wallet payment, opening the opportunity for global bank customers to send funds directly to mobile wallets.
Southeast Asia Champions Inclusive Fintech Success
In SEA, where Ant International has worked with local partners for more than a decade, SMEs have seen measurable impact to their businesses.
Regional FinAI Development:
Interoperability:
Trade and Commerce:
Inclusive Finance:
“As digital economies across Southeast Asia and other developing markets continue to scale, Ant International remains focused on enabling access and fostering shared prosperity. We work with partners, governments and businesses to promote growth that is inclusive, sustainable and globally connected,” Feagin said.
Note: All data are year-on-year comparisons for 2025 vs 2024
About Ant International
With headquarters in Singapore and main operations across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, Ant International is a leading global digital payment, digitisation and financial technology provider. Through collaboration across the private and public sectors, our unified techfin platform supports financial institutions and merchants of all sizes to achieve inclusive growth through a comprehensive range of cutting-edge digital payment and financial services solutions. To learn more, please visit https://www.ant-intl.com/
WorldFirst officially launched in Thailand through its partnership with 2C2P, offering Thai SMEs the innovative unified global account service to simplify international transactions and fuel expansion
EPOS360, the pioneering AI-powered SME app, allows merchants to pair and configure EPOS360 BlueTap, a smart over-the-counter device that supports multiple payment methods in one terminal
Bettr supports digital platforms in Asia and LatAm by providing SMEs with easy access to financing
Alipay+ now connects more than 1.8 billion user accounts across 40 international payment partners to merchants across more than 100 markets
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran fired more missiles at Israel and Gulf Arab states Thursday, demonstrating Tehran’s continued ability to strike its neighbors even as U.S. President Donald Trump claimed the threat from the country was nearly eliminated.
Iran’s attacks on Gulf states along with its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted the world’s energy supplies with effects far beyond the Middle East. That has proved to be Iran’s greatest strategic advantage in the war. Britain held a call with nearly three dozen countries about how to reopen the strait once the fighting is over.
Trump has insisted the strait can be taken by force — but said it is not up to the U.S. to do that. In an address to the American people Wednesday night, he encouraged countries that depend on oil from Hormuz to “build some delayed courage” and go “take it.”
Before the U.S. and Israel started the war on Feb. 28 with strikes on Iran, the waterway was open to traffic and 20% of all traded oil passed through it.
Iran responded defiantly to Trump’s speech, in which the American president claimed U.S. military action had been so decisive that “one of the most powerful countries” is “really no longer a threat.”
A spokesman for Iran’s military, Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, insisted Thursday that Tehran maintains hidden stockpiles of arms, munitions and production facilities. He said facilities targeted so far by U.S. strikes are “insignificant.”
Just before Trump began his address — in which he said U.S. “core strategic objectives are nearing completion” — explosions were heard in Dubai as air defenses worked to intercept an Iranian missile barrage.
Less than a half-hour after the president was done, Israel said its military was also working to intercept incoming missiles. Sirens sounded in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, immediately after the speech.
Attacks continued across Iran on Thursday, with strikes reported in multiple cities.
Trump posted footage on social media showing what he said was the collapse of Iran's biggest bridge and threatening, “Much more to follow.”
Earlier Thursday, Iran state media reported that the B1 bridge, which was still under construction, was attacked. Two semiofficial news agencies reported that two people were killed. It was not immediately clear if the footage Trump shared was the B1 bridge, reportedly the tallest in the Middle East.
In a post on X that included a picture of what appeared to be the same bridge, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote, “Striking civilian infrastructure only conveys the defeat and moral collapse of an enemy in disarray.”
In Lebanon — where Israel has launched a ground invasion against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants — Israeli strikes have killed 27 people in the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 U.S. service members have been killed.
More than 1,300 people have been killed and more than 1 million displaced in Lebanon. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.
Iranian attacks on about two dozen commercial ships, and the threat of more, have halted nearly all traffic in the waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.
Since March 1, traffic through the strait has dropped 94% over the same period last year, according to the Lloyds List Intelligence shipping data firm. Two ships are confirmed to have paid a fee, the firm said, while others were allowed through based on agreements with their home governments.
Saudi Arabia piped about 1 billion barrels of oil away from the Strait of Hormuz in March, according to maritime data firm Kpler, while Iraq said Thursday that it had started to truck oil across Syria to avoid the strait.
The 35 countries that spoke Thursday, including all G7 industrialized democracies except the U.S., as well as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed a declaration last month demanding Iran stop blocking the strait.
Thursday’s talks were focused on political and diplomatic measures, but British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said military planners from an unspecified number of countries will also plot ways to ensure security once fighting ends, including potential mine-clearing work and “reassurance” for commercial shipping.
No country appears willing to try to open the strait by force while the war is raging. French President Emmanuel Macron, while on a visit to South Korea, called a military operation to secure the waterway “unrealistic.”
But there is a concern that Iran might limit traffic through the waterway even after U.S. and Israeli attacks cease.
The conflict is driving up prices for oil and natural gas, roiling stock markets, pushing up the cost of gasoline and threatening to make a range of goods, including food, more expensive.
Oil prices remained elevated, however, at $111.54 for a barrel of U.S. crude, having soared following Trump’s address. That's up about 50% from Feb. 28.
Though the oil and gas that typically transits the strait is primarily sold to Asian nations, Japan and South Korea were the only two countries from the region joining Thursday's call about the strait. The supply of jet fuel has also been interrupted, with consequences for travel worldwide.
Rising from Bangkok and Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands. Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Washington and David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, and Toqa Ezzidin in Cairo contributed to this story.
Israeli security forces and rescue teams inspect a site struck by an Iranian missile in Petah Tikva, Israel,Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Israeli security forces and rescue teams inspect a site struck by an Iranian missile in Petah Tikva, Israel,Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
A boy who fled with his family following Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon sits inside the van they are using as shelter in Sidon, Lebanon, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
A family enjoys their time during the annual public picnic day, known as Sizdeh Bedar, an ancient tradition, marking the 13th and last day of Iranian New Year, or Nowruz, holidays, at Mellat park in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Mourners gather during a funeral procession for Alireza Tangsiri, head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, and others killed in Israeli strikes in late March, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A firefighter extinguishes a car at the site of Israeli airstrikes, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
People take cover in a bomb shelter as air raid sirens warn of incoming Iranian missile strikes in Bnei Brak, Israel, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
Members from the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral of fighters who were killed in a U.S. airstrike, in Tal Afar, Nineveh province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Members from the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral of fighters who were killed in a U.S. airstrike, in Tal Afar, Nineveh province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
The Indian flagged LPG carrier Jag Vasant transporting liquefied petroleum gas, is seen at the Mumbai Port in Mumbai, India, after it arrived clearing the Strait of Hormuz, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
President Donald Trump walks from the Blue Room to speak about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
