With launch partners including Fliggy, Agoda and Trip.com, Ant International has introduced Alipay+ Voyager, an artificial artificial intelligence (AI) travel companion integrated into digital wallets for the travel industry to simplify and enhance travel experiences for global consumers.

Ant International said in a statement on last Wednesday that Alipay+ Voyager combines Ant International’s agentic AI capabilities with the galaxy of cross-border travel services offered by OTA partners and 100 million global merchants in Alipay+’s partner ecosystem.

Through its one single AI interface embedded in e-wallets and super apps, Alipay+ Voyager assists travellers, via text or voice in their local language, to complete itinerary planning, booking, and purchasing in-destination merchant offerings with a seamless flow.

Alipay+ Voyager is first launched on three of Asia’s biggest mobile wallets, Alipay (Chinese mainland), AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR, China) and GCash (the Philippines) ahead of the summer travel peak.

It will roll out to more Alipay+ payment partners throughout 2025.

Alipay+, started as a cross-border payment technology solution, now helping 36 leading e-wallets and payment apps with 1.7 billion consumer accounts connect to over 100 million merchants.

The Alipay+ Wallet Tech team has been working with e-wallet partners in emerging markets to develop payment, security and growth capabilities and solutions since 2015.

Today, the team plans to further build out other agentic AI suites for different industries on Alipay+ GenAI Cockpit, its main AI platform for fintechs.

According to the statement, the online travel market is expected to grow 10% annually through 2032, with mobile already making up two-thirds of traffic.

Travelers, especially Gen Zs, increasingly favor unique, hyperlocal experiences, using mobile-first, all-in-one solutions to uncover their best options.

Alipay+ Voyager has a number of distinct features including intelligent end-to-end assistance from one single hub in familiar wallets: research, decision and action support before, during and after the trip; real-time global-to-local connections: seamless transitioning to local services like ride-hailing, public transport, shopping, dining and sightseeing.

Other features include purposeful, forward-looking curation: Voyager AI intuitively understands a user’s preferences, proactively solves problems when there are issues such as flight delays or bad weather, and surfaces hyper-relevant options in real-time before a traveler even asks, all within their home e-wallet; a new growth gateway for merchants and OTAs: captures multiple core markets through one easy deployment across the largest regional and global e-wallets.

“Travellers today are using more tech to enhance their trips, and there is a need for the industry to adapt and meet these new and emerging expectations,

“By integrating a proactive, always-on AI travel companion within digital wallets that consumers already use frequently, we’re empowering travel and wallet partners with new opportunities to engage travelers in a more relevant, personalized way, through every step of their journey,” said Douglas Feagin, President of Ant International.

Meanwhile, Gil Hazan, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Agoda, said at Agoda, the firm is committed to making travel more accessible and seamless for everyone.

“By integrating our extensive supply network as one of Asia’s leading online travel platforms with Alipay+ Voyager’s expansive wallet partnerships, we can offer travelers a more convenient and personalized booking experience,

“This collaboration enables us to reach a broader audience and provide tailored travel solutions that cater to the diverse needs of today’s travelers,” he added.

With headquarters in Singapore and main operations across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, Ant International is a global digital payment, digitization and financial technology provider.

Through collaboration across the private and public sectors, the firm’s unified techfin platform supports financial institutions and merchants of all sizes to achieve inclusive growth through a comprehensive range of cutting-edge digital payment and financial services solutions.

The firm’s Alipay+ is a unified wallet gateway with cross-border payment and digitization services that help connect global merchants to consumers.

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