Forbes has recently disclosed an interesting development — Ant International is integrating AI and blockchain into the global payment system, and their moves are quite significant.

Their CEO Peng Yang shared quite a bit at the Singapore FinTech Festival. The most valuable might be their foreign exchange prediction model called Falcon: processed $1.5 trillion in transactions, with a prediction accuracy of up to 90%, directly reducing foreign exchange costs by 60%. If this number is real, it’s indeed quite aggressive.

On the technical front, they are making substantial progress. They developed an AI agent called Antom Copilot, which is said to help merchants automate the entire process from payment collection to settlement. More importantly, they are working with giants like Google, Mastercard, and Visa to establish AI payment protocols — if successful, this would significantly influence industry standards. They also have a SHIELD risk management system in operation.

Regulatory cooperation is also in progress. They participated in Singapore’s MAS Guardian Project and Hong Kong’s Monetary Authority Ensemble Project, aiming to incorporate compliance, AI, and blockchain into a regulatory framework for cross-border payments. This approach is quite clever: testing in a sandbox environment and then expanding outward.

Peng Yang’s phrase “post-internet technological revolution” sounds somewhat grandiose, but the core logic is straightforward: using technology to lower the barriers for cross-border payments for emerging markets and SMEs, while simultaneously rebuilding a cheaper settlement network.

Shifting from payment tools to infrastructure providers is a path many tech giants are taking. Can AI combined with blockchain truly transform traditional payment systems? Currently, technical demonstrations look fancy, but large-scale commercial use will depend on how accommodating regulators can be.