Antom and Ant International: A Guide for Global Merchants

In July 2026, Ant International raised approximately US$1.2 billion in Series A financing to support further growth in cross-border payments and services for global businesses.

If you are evaluating payment providers for expansion into Asia, however, you may encounter the Ant International ecosystem in a very different way. You might first find Antom while looking for local payment methods, come across Alipay+ while researching digital wallets, see WorldFirst when exploring cross-border business accounts, and then notice that all of them are connected to Ant International.

This often happens when a payment decision is already taking shape. A US independent online store preparing to enter Thailand or the Philippines, for example, may discover Antom while looking for ways to localize checkout. Before moving further into onboarding, its team may reasonably want to understand who Antom is, how we relate to Ant International, and whether Alipay+, WorldFirst or other parts of the ecosystem are relevant to the same payment decision.

In this guide, we'll introduce who we are, explain where we fit within the wider Ant International ecosystem, and, more importantly, what those relationships mean when you are choosing how to accept and manage payments across markets.

Table of contents

1. What is Antom?
2. What is the relationship between Antom and Ant International?
3. How do Antom, Alipay+, WorldFirst and Bettr differ?
4. What does Antom actually do for global merchants?
5. What does payment localisation look like in practice?
6. How should you evaluate Antom before choosing a payment provider?

What is Antom?

Antom is Ant International's unified merchant payment and digitalisation platform, offering unified, vertical-specific and AI-driven solutions for payments, growth and digitalisation to businesses of all sizes worldwide, helping merchants unlock new growth possibilities beyond payments.

In 2025, we were named to CNBC and Statista's World's Top Fintech Companies list, won Best Merchant Service in Asia Pacific from The Asian Banker's TAB Global, and received both the Digital Experience of the Year – Payments and Service Experience of the Year – Payments awards at Asian Business Review's Asian Experience Awards. We have also been named World's Best B2B Travel Payments Provider at the World Travel Tech Awards for two consecutive years, 2024 and 2025.

What is the relationship between Antom and Ant International?

If you arrived at this page after seeing both Antom and Ant International during your payment research,

here's the short answer: we're part of the Ant International family, and here's how the pieces fit together.

Ant International is a global digital payment, digitisation and financial technology provider with major operations across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. Its current brand portfolio includes Alipay+, Antom, WorldFirst and Bettr, each focused on a different part of cross-border commerce and financial services.

Within this portfolio, we focus on merchant payments and digitalisation. Our platform helps businesses accept and manage different payment methods across markets, from global cards to locally preferred options.

If accepting and managing payments is your priority, our platform is the part of the Ant International ecosystem most relevant to your evaluation.

How do Antom, Alipay+, WorldFirst and Bettr differ?

The easiest way to understand the four brands is to start with the business problem rather than the company chart.

Alipay+ is a unified wallet gateway operated by Ant International. It currently connects 50 mobile payment providers and more than 2 billion consumers across 220+ markets. Alipay is one of the consumer wallets connected through Alipay+; Alipay+ itself is not another consumer wallet. To accept Alipay+, you may use Antom.

WorldFirst addresses a different part of cross-border business. Ant International acquired WorldFirst in 2019 as a foundation for its cross-border funds-management platform for SMEs. Today, WorldFirst focuses on business accounts, international collection, payments and currency management.To receive settlement funds from Antom, you may use WorldFirst.

Bettr focuses on inclusive and embedded finance, so it is usually less central when the immediate question is checkout or acquiring.

These brands can also connect within the wider ecosystem. You may access supported Alipay+ payment methods through us as your acquiring service provider, subject to your setup and eligibility.

This distinction is particularly useful when you are comparing payment providers. If you are researching Ant International because you need to localise checkout, our merchant payment platform is usually the most relevant part of the ecosystem for that decision. If your main concern is receiving and managing cross-border business funds, WorldFirst addresses a different need. Understanding that difference prevents a merchant from comparing products that were designed for different jobs.

What does Antom actually do for global merchants?

When more markets mean more payment complexity

If you are entering one or two new markets, adding a few relevant local payment methods may be enough. But as you expand across more markets, you may also start working with more acquirers and payment providers. At that point, managing all those connections can become a challenge of its own.

Antom Payment Orchestration (APO) is a payment orchestration solution that helps you connect and manage multiple acquirers and payment methods in one place. Instead of building and maintaining a separate integration for every provider, you can use one API to connect to 100+ acquirers and 300+ global payment methods, with AI-powered smart routing and unified payment management.

If you already work with several providers, the benefit is not simply having more payment methods available. It is being able to manage routing and payment operations in a more centralized way as your payment setup becomes more complex.

Managing connections is only one part of the challenge. You also want the customers who reach checkout to be able to complete their payments.

Card payments can fail even when a genuine customer is ready to buy, for example because of an authorization failure or false decline. Our Card Revenue Booster is an AI-powered card payment optimization and revenue-recovery solution designed to help recover some of those transactions and improve card payment performance. It uses AI-powered optimization across areas such as routing, authentication, messaging and retries.

In other words, once you have brought a customer all the way to checkout, the goal is to reduce avoidable payment failures that could otherwise turn purchase intent into lost revenue.

When growth also brings new fraud risks

As you reach more customers and enter more markets, fraud risk can become another challenge to manage.

This is where Antom Shield can help. It is our payment fraud and risk management solution, designed to assess transaction risk in real time. Using machine-learning risk scoring, it helps identify suspicious payments while allowing legitimate customers to continue through checkout.

The aim is not simply to block more transactions. For a growing merchant, good risk management also means finding a better balance between stopping fraud and avoiding unnecessary friction for genuine customers.

When payments can become part of your growth strategy

Once customers can pay successfully and securely, there is another question you may start asking: can the payment ecosystem itself help you reach more customers?

Across participating digital wallet ecosystems in Asia-Pacific, consumers can do more than complete payments. They may also discover offers, receive rewards and interact with merchants within the wallet experience.

A+ Rewards is a one-stop, performance-driven marketing solution that helps merchants use these digital payment ecosystems to support customer growth. It connects 21+ digital payment platforms across 10 major Asia-Pacific markets and supports use cases such as acquiring new customers, re-engaging existing ones and increasing average order value.

For a merchant expanding in Asia, this means payment localization does not necessarily have to stop at offering familiar ways to pay. The payment channels your customers already use may also give you another way to reach them and encourage them to return.

When you want a simpler way to get started

Of course, not every merchant needs to build a highly customized payment stack from day one.

If you run an independent online store with a smaller development team, you may care just as much about how quickly you can get started and how easily you can manage payments afterward.

For eligible merchants using Shopify, our Shopify plugins offer a ready-made way to activate supported Antom payment options in your store without building the payment integration from scratch or adding an SDK. You can also manage orders, settlements, reconciliation, refunds and risk control through Antom Dashboard.

If your store runs on WooCommerce, our WooCommerce plugin offers a similar route. It allows eligible merchants to connect Antom payments without custom development or SDK integration, while managing day-to-day payment operations through Antom Dashboard.

If your payment setup becomes more complex, you may prefer a direct API integration or payment orchestration instead. There is no single integration model that fits every merchant. The right approach depends on where your business is registered, the markets you want to enter, the payment methods you need and how much payment complexity your team is ready to manage.

What payment localisation looks like in practice?

Many merchants only start thinking about payment localisation after they begin attracting customers from new markets. By then, the gap is already visible: customers may be arriving from Asia, while checkout still reflects the payment habits of the merchant’s home market.

The right approach depends on the type and scale of your business.

If you run an independent online store

Suppose you operate a US-based independent store and start seeing more customers from Thailand or the Philippines. You probably do not need dozens of new payment methods on day one.

A more practical approach is to start with the markets that matter most, identify a few locally relevant payment methods, and check whether your business is eligible to accept them.

For smaller teams using Shopify or WooCommerce, a plugin-based setup can also be a practical way to add payment options without building a highly customised payment stack from the start, subject to merchant location and payment-method eligibility.

As those markets grow, you can gradually expand your payment mix instead of adding unnecessary complexity upfront.

If you run a gaming or digital business

The challenge changes when you serve several markets at the same time.

A European gaming company may offer the same game across Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, but players in each country may prefer different ways to pay. The same applies to SaaS and other digital businesses: your product can remain global while your payment setup becomes more local.

As you add more markets and payment methods, payment operations also become more important. Refunds, transaction status, reconciliation and payment security all need to remain manageable as your business grows.

Monitoring your payment acceptance rate can also help you identify whether genuine customers are being lost during payment.

This is often the point where a more centralised payment setup becomes useful.

If you operate at enterprise scale

Our partnerships with Booking.com and Adobe show how the same challenge develops at a much larger scale.

In January 2025,we announced a partnership with Booking.com to introduce more than 40 payment methods across eight Asian markets. The rollout was designed to give travellers more locally relevant payment choices across markets with different payment habits.

Adobe followed a similar approach. In April 2025, Adobe and Antom announced that eight new alternative payment options would be rolled out across eight key Asian markets in the first phase of their partnership.

These businesses operate at a very different scale from an independent store, but the underlying decision is similar: understand where your customers are, how they prefer to pay, and how much payment complexity your team is ready to manage.

Start with your markets, not the size of our network

Whether you are entering your first two Southeast Asian markets or managing payments across Asia at enterprise scale, we recommend starting with your expansion plan rather than our total payment-method coverage.

Identify the markets you want to grow in, the customers you want to reach and the payment methods they actually use. Then consider what your team can realistically integrate and operate.

We can help you evaluate the payment methods and integration approach that fit those priorities.

Payment localisation works best when it is planned as part of market entry, rather than treated as something to fix only after checkout starts limiting growth.

How should you evaluate Antom before choosing a payment provider?

If you are comparing us with another global payment processor, start with your expansion plan and operating requirements rather than the provider's biggest coverage number.

This approach also makes provider comparisons more useful. A broad global network matters when it overlaps with your actual expansion markets. Orchestration becomes relevant when you have enough providers and payment flows to justify another management layer. A plugin may matter more than a highly customised API if your team wants to launch an independent store with limited development resources.

At Antom, we can help you work through these questions before you decide what to integrate. The objective is not to activate every available method. It is to build a payment setup that matches your customers, your markets and the operational complexity you are ready to manage.

Ready to plan your payment setup?

If you are expanding into new markets, contact our team with your business registration location, target markets, business model and current payment setup.

Our payment experts can help you identify relevant payment methods, review suitable integration options and plan the next steps for your Antom setup: Contact Antom