Alibaba Adds Agentic and Payments Capabilities to Qwen
Alibaba Adds Agentic and Payments Capabilities to Qwen
Publish Date: 2026-01-15 13:40:00
Source Domain: www.pymnts.com
- Alibaba has introduced agentic and payments capabilities to its consumer-facing AI app Qwen App, available for public testing in China.
- The app can now order food, complete in-chat payments, book travel, and call restaurants with a single voice or text request.
- Qwen App integrates with the Alibaba ecosystem, including Taobao, Taobao Instant Commerce, Alipay, Fliggy, and Amap, to enable these functions.
- Through Taobao Instant Commerce, the app can place food and beverage orders, apply promotions, and complete payments.
- A new direct integration with Alipay allows the app to perform native AI payments without interrupting the chat, initially available for Taobao Instant Commerce and planned for expansion.
- Alibaba Group Vice President Wu Jia envisions Qwen App as an intelligent assistant, shifting from understanding to deeply connected real-world actions.
- Qwen App reached 100 million monthly active users in its first two months since its launch in November.
- Alibaba has invested heavily in AI, with plans to spend $53.42 billion over the next three years in AI and cloud infrastructure following an investment of over $14 billion the previous year.
