“AI in global commerce an opportunity but challenging”

Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is coming into reshape global commerce is an exciting opportunity but it’s also very much a challenging one said Douglas Feagin, President, Ant International, a Singapore-based fintech company, while speaking at the opening session of the Black Swan Summit being held in Bhubaneswar. 

“You start with the digital infrastructure, which you have here in India and in many countries around the world. And then you need players like what we are trying to introduce with our partners that have some fundamental philosophy to enable the local people and businesses to adopt AI on top of their digital infrastructure,” he said.

On how it is done, he said his company designs products from the beginning so  that people can understand on the street, in their homes, and understand the power of the AI solution for them. So it has to be simple through certain steps, Mr. Feagin said. 

“We believe in bringing global technology to local economies. And so a lot of the things that we’re talking about this morning here in Odisha are things that can happen by bringing global technology further in,” he said.

“And there’s going to be a huge influx of AI technology. And then you need to be collaborative. You can’t have your own solution. Everything must work together,” Mr. Feagin added. 

He said through its Alipay+ solution, the company is connecting 40 mobile wallets around the world to be able to transact in different countries everywhere. 

“And on top of that, to use AI tools so that the local merchant would be able to build an AI-driven store in 10 minutes. The local merchant needs to be able to accept wallets from around the world to be able to pay. The local merchant needs to understand how to manage their finances, to get digital loans, and to build their business,” Mr. Feagin eemphasised. 

“And that’s how you actually promote the fundamental economic development on the ground, which is going to be coming at us in a great new way with AI, but in one that needs to be enabled,” he pointed out. 

On what kind of partnerships are needed to unlock the smaller merchant opportunity in India, Sanjiv Bajaj, Chairman Bajaj Finserv, speaking at the same event said despite 30% of India’s GDP is driven by small business, and MSMEs credit is available to just a fraction of them.

“So there is clearly an arbitrage over there between demand and supply,” he said.

Mr. Bajaj said over the last 20 years India’s digital infrastructure has evolved and creating public platform protocols as public goods. But many of the MSMEs are not aware about multiple available platforms from where they are seamlessly avail credit. 

“Awareness, access, and execution,” is key, he said.

“To a lot of MSMEs don’t know how to use the power of data. Most of them are not literate from a data sense. So I think awareness is very important,” he said. 

Stating that there are more important platforms available to access he said, “We ourselves run one of the largest financial services marketplaces in the country with over 100 partners. We have about 20-25 million loan requests annually on that platform. A small fraction of what Ant International does, but we are growing as well.”

“We have a health aggregation platform that aggregates 15,000 hospitals, 1,50,000 doctor clinics in 150 cities around the country and provides value-added health services. So there will always be the more basic stuff and the more important stuff for those people that need better access,” he emphasised. 

“And then execution. How do we ensure that we make our services available easily and at low cost to the MSME or the small business population,” he pointed out. 

The Black Swan Summit India is organised in Bhubaneswar under BharatNetra, to catalyse skills, jobs and investment Singapore-headquartered Global Finance & Technology Network (GFTN), an entity of Singapore Central Bank in association with Odisha Government has organised the summit on 5 – 6 February 2026 to help the eastern state emerge as India’s future FinTech, AI and Global Capacity Centre (GCC) hub.  With participation from over 1,700 delegates across 24 countries and nearly 100 speakers from 5 continents (North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa). Black Swan Summit India has brought together global and national policymakers, regulators, financial institutions, technology leaders, startups, investors, and academics for an execution-oriented dialogue. The event is aimed at laying the foundation of India’s next phase of digital and economic growth. 

(This writer was in Bhubaneswar at the invitation of Odisha Government & GFTN).

Published – February 05, 2026 10:37 pm IST