The World of Agentic Commerce
The over two billion consumers within Tencent’s WeChat and Alibaba’s ecosystems utilize these platforms for messaging, shopping, and payments through a unified super app. Now, many of these users will have access to AI agents that can facilitate full-fledged agentic commerce.
Alibaba Unlocks Agentic Commerce
Recently, Alibaba has opened its e-commerce ecosystem to its Qwen AI agent. This enables consumers to order food or buy tickets simply by prompting Qwen with their desired items. The AI agent will then handle the transaction, including payment via Alibaba’s Alipay.
Evolution of Qwen
Previously, Qwen was limited to offering recommendations based on user prompts. Consumers still had to visit other platforms for completing their orders.
Building the Competitive Moat
One of Alibaba’s objectives in integrating agentic commerce is to boost user engagement and strengthen its competitive moat. Currently, Tencent’s WeChat holds a dominant position in China’s thriving super app market.
Tencent and ByteDance Move In
Tencent has also signaled its intent to pursue agentic commerce initiatives, with its chatbot Yuanbao potentially following similar upgrades. Meanwhile, TikTok owner ByteDance has advanced its AI chatbot within the e-commerce segment of Douyin.
Germination of Agentic Commerce
The agentic commerce phenomenon was initially sparked by Visa and Mastercard’s rollouts last year. Their efforts inspired major U.S. tech players to either introduce agentic commerce platforms or begin developing the necessary infrastructure.
2026 as a Crucible
Despite these foundational efforts, significant progress in implementing true agentic commerce was limited last year. This suggests that 2026 could be pivotal for this technology, offering both dynamic benefits and compelling concerns.
Super Apps as Proving Ground
In regions like the U.S., agentic commerce services are fragmented across different apps and companies. Super apps, however, could bring agentic capabilities to consumers at scale, making Alibaba’s Taobao, Tencent’s WeChat, and ByteDance’s Douyin compelling test beds for this technology.
