By Gary Liu, CEO and General Manager, Antom
We’ve entered a new era of global commerce, where speed and intelligence define competitiveness. What separates tomorrow’s leaders from those still playing catch-up is the ability to enter new markets and scale seamlessly.
As we move into 2026, growth increasingly depends on two things: unified infrastructure and AI-powered intelligence. To seize new opportunities for growth, then, businesses must first understand what’s changing beneath their feet.
Our experiences in 2025 have so far revealed a striking tension: The world’s economic and digital systems are becoming more interconnected, yet more fragmented at the same time.
Changing trade policies triggered new negotiations, the lasting impacts of which remain uncertain. By the third quarter of 2025, the estimated impacts had climbed to an estimated USD 35 billion for global firms. This portends a sluggish growth environment for 2026, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
As major economies recalibrate in response, businesses must realign their priorities as well. They need to diversify supply chains and move into alternate hubs to reduce geopolitical risk. However, as new markets beckon, businesses need to know how global commerce is evolving in the digital age – and what new rules are in play.
Antom partnered with Deloitte to delve into the impact of the changing global commerce landscape, the new opportunities that have arisen, and strategies to adopt to thrive on the road ahead. Get your copy of the exclusive report to learn more.
Real-time payments, digital wallets, tokenisation and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) are becoming the foundational rails of modern commerce. Each new method brings greater convenience for customers but also new layers of complexity for merchants. The challenge now is orchestration, which means ensuring that these payment experiences work together across markets and regulations.
Fintech and AI have levelled the playing field. The same tools once limited to large enterprises are now within reach of smaller players. But that accessibility has raised the bar. Customers now expect every brand – no matter the size – to deliver fast, secure, and personalized payments.
As businesses expand globally, they often run up against some seemingly insurmountable challenges – from rising risk of fraud to unpredictable FX shifts to high customer acquisition costs.
National and regional boundaries have not disappeared in the digital world. As countries tend to impose divergent standards and systems, e-payment service suppliers often struggle with interoperability issues – keeping each country’s respective e-wallets, acquirers and rules siloed. Regions like Latin America, for instance, tend to be highly localised due to cross-border regulatory friction.
More markets mean greater exposure to online fraud, which continues to escalate across with alarming speed. Data from CoinLaw.io shows that account-takeover (ATO) fraud has risen by 38%, chargeback fraud has increased by 41%, and synthetic-identity fraud is up 80%
The spike for the last item is driven largely by AI-generated deepfake images that help scammers’ synthetic identities pass merchant onboarding KYC.
Multi-currency operations expose businesses to constant shifts in currency values that can distort settlement outcomes in ways that are hard to predict.
In Southeast Asia alone, regional cross-border bank payments remain highly complex due to volatile exchange rates and currency conversion costs, among many other factors which contribute to higher costs for e-payment suppliers.
The modern consumer expects relevant financial services to be seamlessly integrated into shopping. Customers expect convenient, seamless, and relevant purchasing experiences. Any friction in the checkout experience can lead to customer drop-offs and demand increased marketing expenditure to offset lost sales.
Cards are still king in the West, but are not universally preferred. Western preferences are at odds with payment norms in the rest of the world – in Asia-Pacific, for instance, a majority of connected consumers were already using mobile payments via apps by 2016, with the U.S. way behind on that score.
To compete effectively in new markets, businesses need systems that simplify the complexity yet make sense of all the information.
How can businesses succeed in 2026 given these challenges? We see two ways forward: one that simplifies how payments are connected, and another that strengthens how decisions are made.
A unified infrastructure begins with a single integration that opens access to major payment methods, acquirers and markets. This removes the need for country-by-country builds and local workarounds; it turns global coverage into a standard capability rather than a long-term project.
For reference, Antom Payment Orchestration links merchants to 300+ methods and acquirers through a single integration, enabling scale without complexity. Unlike other payment service providers, this setup helps ensure the most suitable transaction routes – and little to no downtime even if one acquirer fails.
And a unified account dashboard, like that of Antom Business Account, can ease the operational strain of managing several bank accounts, currencies and settlement schedules. Take the airline industry for example, the Antom Business Account lets businesses take care of customer-facing transactions such as refunds and business-facing needs such as ticketing with vendors and resellers.
These platforms give businesses a central view of their cash positions across markets. Funds can therefore move more seamlessly, and liquidity becomes easier to manage. This approach allows a company to operate as one global entity rather than a patchwork of regional offices.
AI’s ability to detect irregularities, predict payment patterns and resolve errors in real time have put this technology at the center of cross-border payments.
As markets move faster and payment networks grow more intricate, these capabilities give businesses a steadier, more predictable way to move money across borders – and even reduce common frictions like managing complex dispute settlement issues.
AI-powered tools such as Antom Copilot show how this is done in practice. Our AI agent reviews transaction data in real time and spots unusual activity that might signal risk. It helps merchants decide which disputes are worth pursuing and automatically prepares the necessary documentation.
Gary sharing some of the key agents of Antom Copilot, including agentic payments for F&B merchants, at Voyage, Ant International’s executive merchant forum
The system “learns” as each cycle feeds more information and context into it, sharpening its ability to protect future revenue. This level of operational intelligence keeps payments secure while allowing customers to transact without friction.
Antom Copilot was the world’s first merchant payment service AI agent when it launched in June 2024. Version 2.0 adds features like AI-powered chargeback management, through a Chargeback AI Assistant that helps merchants address disputes more systematically. Pilot testing showed a 3-percentage-point increase in win rates, with time spent on dispute resolution reduced by 46%.
Unified, AI-powered platforms will drive growth and expand merchants’ advantage beyond payments.
We believe today’s AI-powered treasury tools are already powerful enough to monitor currency movements, forecast exposure and optimise liquidity and working capital for businesses. Platforms like Antom Treasury already demonstrate how speed and foresight in treasury management translate into global cash flow efficiency.
Payment data will be key to fueling customer growth. By using AI-powered platforms to analyse how customers pay and what they buy, businesses can recognise loyalty signals and personalise offers to lift conversion rates. For instance, the insights-driven approach in the Antom platform treats every transaction as a stepping stone toward customer lifetime value, not just a single sale.
The era of Unified+AI has begun. Payments now anchor global growth, connecting markets and sustaining the movement of value. AI is becoming a new driving force in international commerce, enabling enterprises and SMEs to make real-time decisions and act with precision.
The businesses that embrace unified and AI-powered solutions will lead the next wave of global commerce. As a trusted partner in this new reality, Antom continues to demonstrate what future-ready payments can be and how businesses can achieve growth.