Ant International Powered Over 2 Billion Transactions in its Core Emerging Markets in 2025, Expanding AI Payments and Digital Commerce Tools for Inclusive Growth

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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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/

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HONG KONG (AP) — A Hong Kong court heard sentencing arguments Tuesday for former publisher Jimmy Lai's co-defendants as it moved closer to sentencing the prominent democracy advocate whose conviction under a national security law could land him in prison for life. The jail term's potential length remained unclear.

Former executives of the now-defunct, pro-democracy newspaper founded by Lai finished pleading for lighter sentences Tuesday afternoon in the landmark case widely seen as a barometer of media freedom in a city once hailed as a bastion of free press in Asia.

The former journalists pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security. They admitted to the prosecution's charge that said they conspired with their ex-boss and onetime media mogul Lai to request foreign sanctions, blockades or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China.

Lai, who pleaded not guilty in the case, was convicted in December. The verdict raised concerns about the city's declining press freedom and drew criticism from foreign governments.

But the government insists the case has nothing to do with media freedom, saying the defendants used news reporting as a pretext for years to commit acts that harmed China and Hong Kong.

Following the conclusion of arguments, Esther Toh, one of the three government-vetted judges, said they would need to analyze the lawyers' arguments, saying they will inform them “as soon as we can" on the sentencing date. They did not give a date.

After the judges left, some people in the public gallery waved goodbye to the defendants. Lai pressed his palms together in an apparent expression of gratitude before leaving the courtroom.

Six Apple Daily executives were convicted in Lai's case: publisher Cheung Kim-hung; associate publisher Chan Pui-man; editor-in-chief Ryan Law; executive editor-in-chief Lam Man-chung; executive editor-in-chief responsible for English news Fung Wai-kong; and editorial writer Yeung Ching-kee. Some of them served as prosecution witnesses during the 156-day trial.

A conviction on the collusion charge carries a sentence ranging from three years to life in prison. But a guilty plea can result in a sentence reduction. Under the security law, a reduced penalty may be granted to those who report on offenses committed by others.

Chan's lawyer, Marco Li, said if the judges decided to place his client in the upper sentencing band, he suggested the starting point should be 10 years, given her limited role. Citing factors including her timely plea and assistance to the prosecution, he asked for her sentence to be halved.

Li said Chan, who started working at Apple Daily in 1996 and has an emotional attachment to journalism, regretted not resisting even more firmly when matters arose that made her uncomfortable. But according to her mitigation letter, Chan couldn't leave her beloved job casually at that time because she was suffering serious health issues and was under financial burden, he said.

Lawyer Erik Shum, who represented Lam, argued the acts of individual defendants and their roles should be taken into account when deciding which tier of the sentencing bands one falls into.

“He was dragged into this deep, muddy water as an employee,” Shum said.

Chung Pui-kuen, Chan's husband and a former top editor of the now-shuttered Stand News, was among those in the public gallery. He was sentenced to 21 months in jail in a separate sedition case.

Lai founded Apple Daily in 1995, two years before Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to Chinese rule. It attracted a strong following with its sometimes sensational reports, investigative scoops and eventual short animated video reports. Being openly critical of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, the newspaper was well-received among pro-democracy readers.

During Hong Kong's massive anti-government protests in 2019, Apple Daily ran articles sympathetic to protesters and supportive of the pro-democracy movement that saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets.

After Beijing imposed the security law to quell the protests, Lai was one of the first prominent figures to be arrested. Within a year, Apple Daily's former executives also were arrested. The prosecutions, asset freeze and police raids forced the newspaper's closure in June 2021. Its final edition sold a million copies.

In their December verdict, the judges said Lai had used Apple Daily as a platform for spreading his political ideas and implementing his political agenda before and after the introduction of the security law.

The judges on Monday heard arguments about the sentencing of Lai, Cheung and two other non-Apple Daily activists involved in the former publisher’s case.

When Lai entered the courtroom Tuesday, he smiled at people sitting in the public gallery as a supporter formed a heart shape with her hands.

FILE - In this June 23, 2021, file photo, Lam Man-chung, left, executive editor-in-Chief of Apple Daily and Chan Pui-man, center, associate publisher of Apple Daily gesture at the headquarters before the newspaper stop publishing in Hong Kong. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

FILE - Chan Pui-man, associate publisher of Apple Daily newspaper walks out from a court in Hong Kong, June 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung), File)