How Ant International Disrupts the Trillion-Dollar Cross-Border Payment: AI Predicts Exchange Rate with 90% Accuracy, Blockchain Network Bypasses Swift

Ant International, the cross-border payment technology division of Ant Group, is quietly disrupting the traditional Treasury Management field by leveraging artificial intelligence and Blockchain technology. The AI model developed by the company can predict its forex demand with an accuracy rate of 90% through deep learning and multidimensional data input, significantly optimizing the costly and time-consuming cross-border fund conversion process. This system began operating in 2024 and processed $1.1 trillion in fund flows throughout 2023. By bypassing the traditional Swift interbank payment system, Ant International has not only reduced transaction times to about 30 seconds but also helped clients decrease their daily cash holdings by up to 60%, adding significant momentum to its story of a spinoff listing.

AI-Driven Financial Management Revolution: From Battlefield Strategies to 90% Prediction Accuracy

On the busy days of handling billions in fund flows on Alibaba Group's e-commerce platform, the team led by Ant International's senior executive Kelvin Li is conducting an experiment on strategy and technology. The core of Ant International lies in an AI-driven currency demand forecasting algorithm, which was originally designed to optimize the cross-border fund flows of Ant itself and its parent company Alibaba Group.

· Core technology and accuracy: This algorithm can predict the company's forex demand with 90% accuracy, allowing it to pre-deploy cash and significantly reduce the costs and time associated with currency exchange and wire transfers in traditional cross-border remittances.

· Strategic Forging: Kelvin Li emphasizes that large promotional activities are not only a test of sales but also a "battlefield" for training AI models, discovering predictive biases, and optimizing code.

Ant International focuses its cross-border payment technology in the Ant International department, and the software is becoming key to its increasing influence in the crucial but often overlooked business area of financial management. Although the financial management team rarely makes headlines, its work quietly ensures the smooth operation of payroll, unexpected expense coverage, and late-night fund transfers. In 2023 alone, this Singapore-based company processed funds of up to $1.1 trillion.

Cross-domain Data Fusion: Deep Learning from Weather to Tropical Plants

The Ant International system is divided into two main parts: the currency demand algorithm and the Blockchain information system. In order to fundamentally improve the accuracy and reliability of predictions, the team has broken away from the old technological architecture and turned to a new AI foundational model similar to ChatGPT, which is capable of processing large amounts of information in parallel.

· Multidimensional Data Input: The new AI model abandons the traditional architecture of processing one input at a time, starting to integrate global data, including shipping rates, weather forecasts, market volatility, logistics bottlenecks, and even seemingly unrelated data such as the growth of tropical plants (the underlying logic: vegetation changes indicate climate changes, which affect weather forecasts, and in turn affect travel, payments, and forex).

· Refined Forecasting: After its launch in 2024, the new model will be able to make predictions accurate to the hour. Kelvin Li expects that the system will ultimately be able to predict the number of people arriving at Hong Kong Airport in the next two hours, how many of them will use taxis, or how many containers all shipping companies in Asia will need to rent next month.

The huge appeal of this combination of technologies for customers lies in its ability to help businesses reduce their cash holdings needed for daily operations by up to 60%. This is crucial for financial management, as the less capital tied up, the more funds available for investing in business expansion or earning returns.

Blockchain payment network: bypassing Swift to reduce transaction costs

The second key element of Ant International is its blockchain-driven interbank information system, which aims to bypass traditional bank cross-border payment networks represented by Swift, to achieve cheaper and more efficient transactions.

· Transaction costs and speed: Traditionally, interbank transactions conducted via Swift incur fees ranging from $10 to $50 per transaction, and banks typically operate only during regular business hours (Monday to Saturday before noon). Ant International has reduced transaction time to approximately 30 seconds by establishing a self-built Blockchain infrastructure with direct connections to major financial institutions such as HSBC Holdings Plc and Standard Chartered Plc.

· Operation mechanism: The system uses digital tokens (a complex form of IOU) to verify the legitimacy of each transaction and track all transactions between ants and partner banks, thereby achieving instant and fully transparent fund transfers without relying on centralized systems.

· Adoption Status: Currently, about 35% of Ant International's financial activities have been transferred to its Blockchain, completing 300,000 transactions in 2023, with this year's goal to double. This move also aligns with China's long-term strategy to reduce reliance on the Western-dominated global financial system, represented by Swift.

Market Competition and IPO Potential: Quietly Capturing a Trillion-Dollar Market

Ant International's solutions have begun to be adopted by external clients, including about 20 external clients, such as Asia's largest low-cost airline AirAsia Bhd. Aireen Omar, CEO of AirAsia Rewards, confirmed that the service helps the airline significantly reduce the 2% to 6% hedging costs added to ticket prices due to forex fluctuations. Ant's revenue model is to take a proportionate cut of the savings generated for clients.

· Competitive landscape: In this field, Ant Group is not fighting alone. As cross-border transactions are expected to continue growing, companies like Amazon are developing similar AI capabilities, while banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. are also using their own Blockchain to provide near real-time cross-border payment services.

· The "Boring" Victory: Andy Mok, a senior researcher at the Beijing-based non-governmental think tank Center for China and Globalization, commented that by expanding into obscure yet essential fields, "Ant can quietly capture a significant market share before everyone notices." This "boring" business means less political pressure, while being "overlooked" implies greater room for growth.

With Kelvin Li's technological breakthrough and Jack Ma's relinquishment of control over the company in January 2023, Ant Group's recovery process has accelerated. In March 2024, Ant International established an independent board of directors. Bloomberg reported that Ant Group's current strategy is to spin off its various units for separate listings. Given that Ant International has generated nearly $3 billion in annual revenue, Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that if it were to go public in Hong Kong, its valuation could reach as high as $19.2 billion. This new revenue stream from financial management will undoubtedly make Ant International's IPO story more attractive.

Conclusion

Ant International's innovative use of AI for Depth prediction and Blockchain to bypass Swift not only addresses its own efficiency bottleneck in cross-border fund management but also initiates a disruptive challenge to the trillion-dollar global financial management market. This technology-driven strategy, which serves fundamental business needs, has allowed it to quietly accumulate significant market share and technological barriers. As more banks join its network and Chinese companies accelerate their overseas expansion, Ant International's growth momentum is strong, laying a solid foundation for its potential spin-off IPO, marking a new wave of significant changes in the global fintech sector.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute any investment advice. The cryptocurrency market is highly volatile, and investors should make decisions cautiously.