Alibaba Adds Agentic and Payments Capabilities to Consumer AI App

Alibaba has added agentic and payments capabilities to its consumer-facing artificial intelligence (AI) app Qwen App.

With new features that are now available for public testing in China, Qwen App can order food, complete in-chat payments, call and book travel, and call restaurants, Alibaba said in a Thursday (Jan. 15) press release.

Each of these end-to-end actions can be set in motion by a single voice or text request from the user, according to the release.

These features are enabled by the app’s integration with other parts of the Alibaba ecosystem, including Taobao, Taobao Instant Commerce, Alipay, Fliggy and Amap, the release said.

Through Taobao Instant Commerce, Qwen App can place food and beverage orders, apply promotions and complete payments, per the release. Through Fliggy, it can design travel itineraries, compare options and complete bookings. Through Taobao, the app can complete purchases of products the user discovered through the conversational interface of the Qwen App.

A new direct integration of Qwen App with Alipay enables native AI payment so that when the user gives explicit confirmation, the app can complete transactions without leaving the conversation, according to the release.

This AI payment capability is now available for Taobao Instant Commerce and will later be expanded to other services, per the release.

Alibaba Group Vice President Wu Jia said in the release that the company is building an app that can free users from having to perform repetitive tasks and can become “an intelligent assistant they can rely on.”

“What we are launching today represents a shift from models that understand to systems that act — deeply connected to real-world services,” Wu said. “Qwen App is Alibaba’s approach to the next era of applications: not just powerful, but genuinely useful in everyday life.”

Qwen App was released in November and gained 100 million monthly active users in its first two months, per the release.

It was reported in September that Alibaba’s AI investments could make it one of the world’s biggest companies. The firm had invested over $14 billion in AI infrastructure and research over the previous year, and it planned to spend $53.42 billion in AI and cloud infrastructure over the next three years.