PayPal VP: AI Agent-Driven Payments Still Nascent, Company Teams with OpenAI and Others on Infrastructure

At PayPal's 2026 Greater China Cross-border E-commerce Conference in September 2026, Zhang Hong, PayPal's vice president and CEO of Greater China, said AI agent-initiated transactions are still in the early exploration stage globally. He noted that when ordering decisions shift from humans to AI, questions around liability, fraud prevention and dispute resolution remain unsettled, and the underlying infrastructure is not yet fully built.

Despite the unproven scenario, payment companies have begun to position themselves. Zhang said PayPal has established partnerships with Microsoft, Google, OpenAI and Perplexity to jointly build open, interoperable and highly trusted underlying infrastructure. A S&P Global survey cited at the conference found that two-thirds of merchant respondents expect agent-initiated transactions to account for more than 10% of their e-commerce volume within three years.

PayPal also disclosed that about 50 million consumers in over 100 countries and regions purchased goods from Greater China merchants through PayPal in the past 12 months, with repeat buyers accounting for more than half. Product updates announced at the conference include expanding multi-currency display support from 22 to 106 currencies, adding euro and pound sterling withdrawal capabilities, reducing RMB withdrawal settlement time to as fast as four hours, and launching an upgraded AI assistant for small and medium-sized businesses.