Eric Jing, Chairman of Ant Group, reaffirmed Ant’s commitment to deepening cross-sector collaboration on regulated AI and tokenization innovation in the territory, and to expanding its cross-border payment and trade financing services to support Hong Kong’s initiative to help Chinese businesses go global.
Speaking on a panel with Christopher Hui, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, and Fred Hu, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Primavera Capital Group at the 10th annual Hong Kong Fintech Week on November 3, 2025, Jing said the City’s visionary and prudent approach to policy innovation, rich commercial and financial use cases and a robust ecosystem of cross-sector collaboration constitute a strong foundation for the City’s continued global leadership.
Ant Group took its first steps in Hong Kong when Chinese consumers and travellers began to make cross-border payments online and offline in Hong Kong with Alipay. Today, Hong Kong is a critical globalization anchor for Ant Group and its main affiliates, including Ant Digital Technologies, Ant International, and OceanBase, a distributed database technology provider.
AI and Tokenization Driving Evolution of Finance
“AI and tokenization are the two of the most critical forces driving the evolution of financial services,” said Jing. “Hong Kong regulators are leading the global experiment in both areas through visionary and prudent policy mechanisms.”
“Financial services are data-rich and language-heavy, relying on precise communication of abstract and complex products. Nevertheless, the pace of change is faster and faster. In the mid-term, we will be able to see the rise of full AI account managers supported by agentic systems,” Jing said.
While AI will help build accessible and quality professional financial services for billions, blockchain-based tokenization technology also demonstrates proven potential to realize secure and reliable global real-time settlement to improve trade efficiency for economies large and small.
“The trend for tokenization in fintech is not for speculation, but for regulated institutions to work within the policy framework to improve real efficiency and transparency in value exchange,” Jing said.
Ant Expanding Collaboration in Hong Kong on AI & Blockchain Innovation
Ant Group’s digital technology subsidiary, Ant Digital Technologies (AntDT), is a key participant of HKMA’s GenAI Sandbox to support banks’ adoption of AI agents, and apply AI to unstructured data to develop enhanced risk management and anti-fraud solutions.
Early in 2025, AntDT announced a series of new initiatives from its international headquarters in Hong Kong. AntDT established a joint AI and Web3 lab with Hong Kong Polytechnic University to accelerate breakthroughs and train new talents. It also recently announced that it is opening all four core pillar technologies to Hong Kong industry partners.
Under Project Ensemble, Ant International worked on two use cases for global liquidity management with Standard Chartered and HSBC, leveraging its Whale blockchain platform to enable real-time cross-border, cross-currency institutional settlements. Following the collaboration in the Sandbox, Ant International also supported the co-development of HSBC’s first global tokenized deposits solution for its corporate clients.
Through Alipay+, the global wallet gateway service under Ant International, AI payment and growth agents are rolling out not only to the 4.5 million Hong Kong active users and businesses through AlipayHK, the City’s largest digital and financial services platform, but also partner wallets in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Expanding Cross-Border Financial Services from Hong Kong for Chinese Businesses to Go Global
In October, Hong Kong launched the GoGlobal Task Force – a one-stop support platform aimed at helping Chinese mainland enterprises expand their international business using Hong Kong as a strategic base.
Under Ant International, Antom, the unified merchant payment service, provides integrated payment facilitation and growth solutions to China’s travel, digital and entertainment (D&E) and electric vehicle (EV) leaders. WorldFirst, a payment and financial services hub for SMEs, already supports 50,000 cross-border businesses in global e-commerce.
“Hong Kong has a lot of advantages as a GoGlobal centre for Chinese businesses – world-leading financial systems, outstanding professional services, and a pool of talents with global insights and knowledge,” said Jing. “We look forward to expanding our cross-border payment, account and trade financing services from here to help more Chinese companies reach overseas markets and capital.”
