Ant International strengthens cross-border payments with privacy upgrade

By Aarav Garg

Ant International has completed an upgrade of its Alipay+ wallet gateway, with all core operations enabled by privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). The company said Alipay+ is the first live digital payments platform to fully deploy PETs, covering its network of 1.8 billion e-wallet users.

The upgrade has strengthened data privacy in cross-border payments. PETs allow data to be processed and analysed while remaining encrypted and unidentifiable. Under the new framework, all data handled by Alipay+ is encrypted before processing and remains protected throughout the transaction lifecycle.

“Trust in our systems is integral to our ability to deliver secure and efficient digital services to users globally,” said Jiang-Ming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer of Ant International. “This upgrade enables us to safeguard and strengthen that trust, by giving partners and customers assurance that their data remains private throughout the payment lifecycle – even to us.”

For partners, the model has supported compliance with evolving data privacy and data sovereignty requirements, while reducing risks linked to the transfer of sensitive information. Only encrypted data is shared within the system, with no impact on user experience. Ant International has also invited wallet partners to adopt PETs and plans to open-source parts of the technology in phases.

The deployment has been developed in collaboration with regulators. In Singapore, Ant International worked with the Personal Data Protection Commission on a proof-of-concept using PETs for AI model training without sharing raw customer data.

The initiative has also aligned with research efforts, including collaboration with Nanyang Technological University, to advance secure digital payment infrastructure and trusted AI applications.