Prime Highlights:
- Alibaba.com launches a new subscription service to help buyers and suppliers find and compare products more easily.
- The platform is exploring tokenized payments to make cross-border transactions faster and more efficient.
Key Facts:
- The number of active suppliers on Alibaba.com grew by 50% between March and October compared to last year.
- Alibaba.com plans to introduce a feature called “agentic pay” that can automatically generate contracts between buyers and suppliers.
Background:
Alibaba’s cross-border e-commerce division is working to make global trade faster and easier. Alibaba.com, the company’s B2B arm, has launched a new subscription service to help buyers and suppliers find and compare products more easily. It is also exploring digital payments to speed up international transactions.
Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com, said the service, called “AI Mode,” lets users compare suppliers on things like price, production, and shipping.
Alibaba.com, the company’s B2B arm, has launched a new subscription service to help buyers and suppliers find and compare products more easily. It is also exploring digital payments to speed up international transactions.
Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com, said the service, called “AI Mode,” lets users compare suppliers on things like price, production, and shipping. The company is considering a subscription model priced at around $20 per month or $99 per year, though final pricing is still under discussion.
Alibaba.com reported a 50% increase in active suppliers worldwide between March and October compared to the same period last year. “There are a lot of quality products around the world that can contribute to the global supply chain, and we are investing heavily in that area,” Zhang said.
To address delays and costs in international transactions, Alibaba.com is planning to introduce a tokenized payment system in collaboration with JPMorgan. This system, using digital representations of fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar and euro, allows money to move faster across borders by reducing the number of intermediaries.
In addition, the platform will soon launch “agentic pay,” an AI feature capable of automatically generating contracts between buyers and suppliers based on conversations in the platform’s messaging system. This innovation is designed to make B2B transactions faster and more efficient.
Alibaba.com’s focus on digital tools and tokenized payments shows the company’s goal of improving and modernizing global trade. “We feel the urgency to use AI to redesign how people conduct global trade. We think it’s going to be a paradigm shift for B2B e-commerce,” Zhang added.
With new subscription services, tokenized payments, and a growing supplier network, Alibaba.com is becoming a leading innovator in the global B2B market.
