Visa, Mastercard, and CBDCs Threaten Ant
Ant Group
The real risk is that AI checkout could move control of payments from wallets to network level rules. Ant wins most when Alipay sits in front of the user, picks the payment method, and layers on credit, merchant tools, and cross border routing. If Visa, Mastercard, or a state rail becomes the trusted identity and settlement layer for AI agents, Ant can still process volume, but it captures less of the customer relationship and less of the margin.
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Ant already runs payments on thin economics. Domestic consumption payment take rates have compressed to roughly 20 basis points, which means the higher value comes from owning the app entry point and selling adjacent services. If another protocol owns agent identity and checkout authorization, Ant is left doing more plumbing and less monetization.
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Visa and Mastercard are explicitly trying to become that protocol layer. Visa is positioning Intelligent Commerce as the way AI agents apply offers and choose payment methods at checkout. Mastercard Agent Pay registers and authenticates agents, uses network tokens, and is being built as a standard that works across existing merchant acceptance rails.
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Cross border payments make the threat sharper. Ant International grows through Alipay+, which connects local wallets and QR schemes rather than replacing them. That looks powerful when the ecosystem is fragmented. But the stablecoin and CBDC playbook points toward a market where the winning layer is the one that provides interoperability, liquidity, and settlement standards across corridors.
The next phase of competition is about who becomes the default trust layer for machine made purchases. If card networks and public digital money rails become the standard interface for agent identity, consent, and settlement, Ant will need to climb back up the stack with merchant software, consumer distribution, and international wallet aggregation so it remains more than a transaction processor.