Alipay Merges Three Major Business Units, Wu Minzhi Appointed as New Business Group President
nashnova research
Ant Group is folding Alipay's platform unit, digital-payments unit, and Zhima Credit into a single business group, with Wu Minzhi as president. This means Alipay is pulling scattered payment, credit, and platform resources under one roof to clear the runway for AI commercialization.
What exactly is being merged?
Three units become one: Alipay Business Group (platform operations) + Digital Payments Business Group + Zhima Credit Business Unit (credit services) → the new "Alipay Business Group."
This means → tech, product, and merchant resources that reported to separate leaders now sit under one management structure.
In plain terms = three departments that each ran their own show now share one team and one budget.
Why restructure now?
CEO Han Xinyi framed the move around one concept: "agentic commerce" — deploying AI agents at scale across business scenarios.
Alipay had already laid out a "dual flywheel" strategy: build AI capabilities for users and merchants in parallel.
This means → the merger is not a headcount cut. It is designed to let AI capabilities run through payments, credit, and the platform in a single pass, instead of each unit building its own stack.
How far along is AI deployment?
Personal assistant "A-Bao" has been live for roughly three months, driving AI upgrades across more than 10,000 services and connecting to phones, in-car systems, watches, and smart glasses.
AI-powered payments now have a full-stack product system with a cumulative 300 million AI-payment transactions.
"Tap-to-pay" (碰一下) continues to expand offline payment scenarios and is being used to connect merchants to digital operations tools.
This reflects that Alipay's AI push has moved past the concept stage and is scaling in two directions at once — transaction volume and hardware ecosystem.
What comes next for the merged group?
On the user side: advance an AI wallet and life assistant so AI agents handle payments and daily services directly.
On the merchant side: deliver operations tools through the Alipay AI Open Platform, bundling payment data, credit data, and platform traffic for merchants.
In plain terms = for users, AI helps you pay and get things done; for merchants, AI helps you attract customers and run your store — both sides driven by one platform.
Who is Wu Minzhi, and why her?
Wu Minzhi joined Ant Group in August 2021. She spent more than twenty years at Alibaba Group, serving as president of the International Trade Business Group, president of the B2B Business Group, and Chief Customer Officer.
She also holds the title of Ant Group Chief Product Officer (CPO).
This means → Ant picked a veteran who understands both platform operations and B2B commercial services. The signal is clear: the merger is about commercialization, not a tech experiment.
What should the market watch?
Whether the three-in-one structure actually accelerates AI commercialization is the key test ahead.
The core question: after pooling resources, can agentic-commerce product development and revenue conversion run at a faster pace than the fragmented setup delivered.
In plain terms = merging departments is the easy part. The real exam is whether a unified Alipay can turn AI into money faster than before.
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