Combining the agentic AI capabilities of Ant International, a global digital payment, digitisation, and financial technology provider, with cross-border travel services offered by partners including Agoda, Fliggy and Trip.com, Alipay+ Voyager is launched to simplify and enhance travel experiences for global consumers.
Alipay+ Voyager is an AI travel companion integrated into digital wallets. It will use services offered by 100 million global merchants in Alipay+’s partner ecosystem. Through its single AI interface embedded in e-wallets and super apps, the platform assists travellers, via text or voice in their local language, to complete itinerary planning, booking, and purchasing in-destination merchant offerings with a seamless flow.
Alipay+ Voyager is first launched on three of Asia’s biggest mobile wallets, Alipay (Chinese mainland), AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR, China) and GCash (the Philippines), ahead of the summer travel peak. It will roll out to more Alipay+ payment partners throughout 2025.
The launch comes as the online travel market is expected to grow 10 per cent annually through 2032, with mobile already making up two-thirds of traffic. Travellers, especially Gen Zs, increasingly favour unique, hyperlocal experiences, using mobile-first, all-in-one solutions to uncover their best options.
“Travellers today are using more tech to enhance their trips, and there is a need for the industry to adapt and meet these new and emerging expectations,” said Douglas Feagin, president of Ant International. “By integrating a proactive, always-on AI travel companion within digital wallets that consumers already use frequently, we’re empowering travel and wallet partners with new opportunities to engage travellers in a more relevant, personalised way, through every step of their journey.”
Perks of Alipay+ Voyager
Alipay+ Voyager has several distinct features:
- Intelligent end-to-end assistance from one single hub in familiar wallets: research, decision and action support before, during and after the trip
- Real-time global-to-local connections: seamless transitioning to local services like ride-hailing, public transport, shopping, dining and sightseeing;
- Purposeful, forward-looking curation: Voyager AI intuitively understands a user’s preferences, proactively solves problems when there are issues such as flight delays or bad weather, and surfaces hyper-relevant options in real-time before a traveller even asks, all within their home e-wallet;
- A new growth gateway for merchants and OTAs: captures multiple core markets through one easy deployment across the largest regional and global e-wallets.
Capitalising on consumer demand
Alipay+ started as a cross-border payment technology solution. Now, it helps 36 e-wallets and payment apps with 1.7 billion consumer accounts connect to over 100 million merchants. The Alipay+ Wallet Tech team has been working with e-wallet partners in emerging markets to develop payment, security and growth capabilities and solutions since 2015. The team plans to further build out other agentic AI suites for different industries on Alipay+ GenAI Cockpit, its main AI platform for fintechs.
Gil Hazan, senior vice president of strategic partnerships, Agoda, said: “At Agoda, we are committed to making travel more accessible and seamless for everyone. By integrating our extensive supply network as one of Asia’s leading online travel platforms with Alipay+ Voyager’s expansive wallet partnerships, we can offer travellers a more convenient and personalized booking experience.
“This collaboration enables us to reach a broader audience and provide tailored travel solutions that cater to the diverse needs of today’s travellers.”
