The Ant International Sustainability Report 2025 sets out the company’s sustainability agenda across payment access, SME digitalisation, AI, embedded finance and digital trust.
Rather than treating sustainability as a separate corporate track, the report places it closer to the way digital financial services operate.
Merchant access, credit availability, risk controls and online trust all sit within the wider discussion.
Published as Ant International’s second sustainability report since independent operations began, the 2025 edition marks the first year sustainability metrics were added to management performance evaluation.
Ant International’s Chairman, Eric Jing, described the approach as making accountability “structural, not aspirational.”
The 6T Framework Shapes Ant International’s Sustainability Approach
Ant International organises its 2025 sustainability agenda around the 6T Sustainability Framework, covering Travel, Trade, Thrive, Technology, Talent and Trust.
The framework spreads sustainability across cross-border payments, merchant services, AI tools, credit access, compliance and talent development, rather than keeping it within a standalone corporate function.
Leadership accountability also receives more emphasis this year.
Sustainability metrics have been added to management evaluation, giving inclusion and responsible innovation a more formal role in how performance is assessed.
That helps explain the report’s focus on fintech infrastructure.
Climate and community work remain part of the discussion, although much of the attention goes to the operating layers behind digital commerce, where payments, SME activity and trust are increasingly connected.
Alipay+ and DuitNow QR Show the Local Impact of Cross-Border Payments
Alipay+ carries much of the discussion on cross-border payments and financial inclusion.
In 2025, the platform reached around 2 billion global user accounts, more than 150 million merchants, 47 mobile payment partners and over 220 markets.
More than 90% of Alipay+ offline merchants are SMEs, which gives the payment interoperability discussion a clear merchant angle.
Smaller businesses may sit close to tourist footfall, yet still lose the sale when payment acceptance does not match how travellers prefer to pay.
Ant International frames Alipay+ as one way to reduce that friction. Travellers can pay with a familiar home wallet, while merchants accept payments through local QR infrastructure.
Alipay+ also gives merchants tools for pre-trip visibility, in-destination engagement and post-transaction customer links.
Malaysia gives this section one of its clearest regional examples as more than 360,000 MSMEs in Malaysia have benefited from tourism growth by accepting cross-border mobile payments, while tourism spending via DuitNow QR doubled.
Alipay+ now connects 15 international wallets accepted at nearly 2 million DuitNow QR merchants, accounting for more than 80% of inbound cross-border QR payments.
The merchant example comes through Stellar Coffee in Kuala Lumpur’s Rex building, where around 70% of customers are international visitors.
After adopting Alipay+ through DuitNow QR in late 2023, more than 90% of its transactions became cashless.
DuitNow QR is taking on a wider role in Malaysia’s tourism economy. Beyond domestic payments, it is helping local MSMEs reach inbound travellers who may otherwise spend mainly within larger retail or platform ecosystems.
SME Digitalisation Covers Trade, Payments and Credit
WorldFirst, Antom and Bettr move the SME discussion beyond payment acceptance, with a focus on the account, payment and credit tools that smaller businesses need across markets.
WorldFirst now serves more than 1.6 million SME customers across over 210 markets.
SMEs can use the platform to open accounts, collect funds and make payments in more than 130 currencies. It also supports treasury management and access to over 130 global marketplaces.
Antom adds the merchant payment layer, with more than 300 payment methods available across its network.
Smaller businesses need support beyond checkout. Foreign exchange, marketplace collections, supplier payments and reconciliation all affect how easily they can trade across markets.
Credit access remains another gap when traditional lending models do not fully capture their business activity.
Bettr adds the credit access layer, with its credit services reaching more than 30 million eligible users across 20 markets, alongside more than 980,000 credit services and digital banking users, and over 110,000 SME customers.
Ant International says Bettr uses platform-based information to support more tailored risk assessment for users and businesses that may not fit traditional credit models.
The company also highlights its investment in R2, a lending platform operating across Latin America, where unmet financing demand exceeds US$1 trillion.
AI Tools Move Closer to SME Operations
AI appears across several parts of Ant International’s 2025 sustainability agenda, especially under its Technology and Trade pillars.
The company says it rolled out tools that help SMEs and emerging markets use AI without heavy infrastructure or deep technical capacity.
Antom Copilot 2.0 automates payment integration, onboarding, risk and chargeback resolution, while Antom Agentic Payment Solution allows AI agents to initiate and complete card and alternative payment method transactions under a mandate model.
Other tools broaden the AI section beyond payments.
GenAI Cockpit helps fintechs such as Malaysia’s TNG eWallet and Pakistan’s easypaisa build AI commerce tools, while Alipay+ Voyager supports travel use cases as an agentic AI companion embedded in super apps.
EPOS360 brings AI into SME operations and financing in Southeast Asia.
Ant International also points to Falcon AI FX, its open-sourced AI foreign exchange solution, which delivers FX forecasts with up to 93% prediction accuracy and runs on more than 8.5 billion data parameters.
Across these examples, AI in fintech is linked to payment operations, merchant onboarding, FX forecasting, customer service, travel planning and chargeback handling.
The report also touches on agentic commerce, as AI agents begin to sit closer to how transactions are initiated and completed.
Digital Trust and Fraud Prevention Move Into Focus
Digital trust receives a more prominent role alongside growth, with Ant International saying its risk solutions reduced fraud rates by 50%.
The company also highlights its SHIELD 3-in-1 Transformer model, supported by 7 billion parameters, which identifies high-risk transactions with more than 95% precision while raising payment success rates by up to 13.5%.
The Digital Wallet Guardian Partnership shares anti-fraud and fund protection tools with wallet partners.
Ant International’s Alipay+ Privacy Enhancing Technology programme was also cited by Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission in practical industry guidance.
As digital commerce becomes more connected, trust controls are becoming harder to separate from the payment infrastructure itself.
Talent and Social Impact Add the Wider Sustainability Layer
The broader sustainability section covers talent development, social impact and environmental engagement alongside Ant International’s fintech initiatives.
Through 10×1000 Tech for Inclusion, Ant International has certified 9,504 learners since 2018, with women making up 55% of the group. The company also says it has empowered more than 16,000 women cumulatively.
Its social impact work also runs through wallet and platform partnerships.
AlipayHK’s fundraising channel after the Tai Po fire raised around US$25.5 million (HK$200 million) from 450,000 super app users in the first three days, while in Indonesia, Ant International worked with DANA and Konservasi Indonesia on Ocean Buddy, an in-app whale-shark protection mini-programme.
These programmes place talent development and public participation alongside the company’s core fintech themes, rounding out a report that otherwise focuses heavily on payments, SME access, AI tools and digital trust.
The full Ant International Sustainability Report 2025 goes deeper into the company’s 6T framework, product initiatives, governance approach, community programmes and environmental disclosures.
Download the full report for the complete breakdown.
Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore based on images by aestelle via Unsplash and the 2025 Ant International Sustainability Report.
This article first appeared on Fintech News Singapore.
