NUPIAO Reporter |
NUPIAO Editor | NUPIAO
After spending two years hitting the 400 million user mark, Alipay’s “Tap” feature is turning to AI for its next big growth push.
On July 8, Alipay dropped some big news: their “Tap” feature has smashed through 400 million users, deployed over 30 million offline touchpoints, and partnered with more than 2,300 ecosystem players. Plus, riding on the AI upgrade of these 30 million physical points, “Tap” is set to heavily roll out its Agent (smart agent) service network in 2026.
Launched officially in July 2024, Alipay spent the next two years aggressively scaling up from both the user and merchant sides, fiercely battling rivals’ “scan-to-pay” for market share.
To pull in new users, Alipay threw massive subsidies at key marketing moments. On the scenario side, “Tap” branched out from just paying to ordering food, unlocking doors, grabbing parcels, checking into hotels, and catching buses—basically evolving from a simple payment action into a full-blown digital service. A huge milestone hit in August 2025 was Alipay’s partnership with Focus Media, rapidly rolling out “Tap” devices in elevators across over 20 cities nationwide.
Now that they’ve hit 400 million users, AI is the new story Alipay’s “Tap” wants to tell.
Right now, millions of merchant-side “Tap” devices have been bulk-upgraded to “Tap Device Agents.” Once upgraded, “Tap” bridges online Agents with offline scenarios. For instance, when you tap your phone on a merchant’s device, it triggers Agent “Xiaoyu” to dish out skills like consumer vouchers and super coupons. We’ve already seen it in action: Hangzhou East Station launched a tap-to-access “Hang Xiaodong” smart agent to instantly check parking info and ride-hailing updates; the Shanghai Social Security Center also kicked off “Tap” for handling administrative tasks.
Alipay explained that their merchant “Tap Device Agent” Xiaoyu syncs across “Tap” devices, POS machines, and phones. Merchants just have a quick chat with “Xiaoyu” to get store data analysis and deploy business strategy upgrades, letting store ops run on AI power with just a light human confirmation.
In the previous scale-hunting phase, “Tap” grew through ground pushing and subsidies—a playbook Alipay has been super familiar with for years.
Li Jiajia, Vice President of Ant Group and Co-President of the Payment Business Group, told NUPIAO and other media that Alipay’s ecosystem is packed with service providers who’ve built up tons of trusted clients, which is exactly why they could push “Tap” devices out so fast. As reported by 36Kr, in just four months, the subsidies and installation costs for “Tap” topped 10 billion yuan.
But times are changing, and Alipay’s “Tap” has hit the stage where it has to seriously think about commercialization.
According to Alibaba Group’s fiscal year report, Alibaba raked in 5.048 billion yuan from Ant Group in fiscal 2026. Crunching the numbers, Ant Group’s full-year profit for 2025 was around 15.3 billion yuan, a 60% year-on-year drop. The report made it clear: profits tanked mainly because Ant dialed up investments in new growth initiatives (including user growth) and tech.
At the same time, Ant Group keeps hammering home its AI strategy, pouring heavy R&D funds into AI across payments, finance, and health. For Alipay specifically, the AI version “Abao” opened for public beta on July 2, and official stats show Alipay’s AI payments have topped 300 million transactions. “Tap” plays the offline terminal role to close the transaction loop: users “tap” to wake up the merchant’s smart agent, which handles product intros and package recommendations, and finally, the user authorizes and pays via Alipay’s “AI Payment.”
Looking further ahead, subsidy-driven user acquisition is just the starting line. After using “Tap” to pull users into the payment action, the competition and monetization anxiety facing Alipay arrived right on schedule.
On one hand, 2025 saw companies like Meituan and Xiaohongshu rolling out their own “Tap” and “Tap-to-Tap” tech. On the other hand, Alipay’s “Tap” absolutely has to unlock more business models to recoup those massive hardware costs. NUPIAO learned that alongside the AI upgrade, Alipay’s “AI Payment” has already launched an AI marketing suite, exploring value-added service fees. How to get merchants to willingly pay for “Tap” is going to be the next big hurdle.
