AI has moved from concept to in-depth and large-scale implementation in the field of cross-border payments.
AI technology is becoming an important booster for Chinese companies to go overseas.
Data from OKKI (Xiaoman Technology), a subsidiary of Alibaba International Station, shows that in 2025, OKKI AI has helped overseas merchants complete 890 million professional tasks, covering basic tasks such as new customer discovery, email communication, customer back-tracking, and business opportunity promotion. Loop AI, the exclusive AI solution of payment institution Lianlian Digital, has been fully implemented and has cumulatively helped merchants achieve dozens of times improvement in content production efficiency and reduction of operating labor costs by more than 50%, effectively lowering the global operation threshold for small and medium-sized cross-border merchants.
Zhang Zhengyu, founder, chairman and CEO of Lianlian Digital, said: “For Chinese companies going overseas, AI will reconstruct the entire cross-border collection and payment link, simplify the process, shorten the payment cycle, and reduce comprehensive payment costs; at the same time, it can gain insight into global market transaction characteristics and industry trends, and provide enterprises with insights into the characteristics of global market transactions and industry trends.
Provide data support for overseas layout and business decisions, truly helping overseas enterprises to operate in compliance, save money, and increase operating efficiency.”
Currently, Chinese enterprises going overseas have bid farewell to the initial stage of “going out” by simply exporting products, and are entering a new development cycle of “going in” and “going up” with deep roots and leaps in capabilities.
It presents three distinctive characteristics: first, it has upgraded from exporting goods overseas to exporting a full value chain of technology, brand, and ecology; second, it has shifted from being cost-driven to being core-driven by compliance, technology, and brand; third, the entities going overseas have become more diversified, and the track has concentrated on high-tech and high-value-added fields, and the development model has also shifted from “working alone” to collaboratively building an industrial chain.
In the process of going overseas, Chinese companies have concentrated pain points in the payment process.
Global compliance thresholds are high and supervision is fragmented; capital links are blocked, arrival is slow, and costs are high; localized payment adaptation is insufficient; risk control is weak and transaction risks are prominent; and it is difficult to uniformly manage funds across multiple platforms and sites.
Lianlian Digital’s solution philosophy adheres to compliance first, licensed operations, technology empowerment, and local deep cultivation.
Utilize a complete global compliance license matrix and local regulatory access qualifications to break down compliance barriers in various countries; build a global integrated payment network to simplify intermediate circulation links; use AI and other technological means to reduce payment costs, hedge exchange rate fluctuation risks, and provide multi-currency accounts, global fund collection, one-click settlement and other capabilities.
Provide differentiated solutions for different types of overseas enterprises, such as creating full-link cross-border e-commerce solutions for cross-border e-commerce sellers.
Lianlian’s digital business layout covers key global markets such as Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United States, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Thailand, Indonesia, and Canada.
It is deeply engaged in mainstream scenarios such as cross-border e-commerce, B2B foreign trade enterprises, and service trade in mainland China; Hong Kong, China coordinates business radiating to Europe, the United States, and Southeast Asia; the United States is deeply rooted in the local ecology; the United Kingdom and Luxembourg radiate the entire European market; Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia meet the needs of regional digital economic development.
In the process of localization, Lianlian Digital takes the path of deep localization, setting up local operation teams, compliance teams, risk control and product teams to fully adapt to local regulatory rules and payment habits.
Although compliance costs are high, this is a strategic long-term investment, in exchange for global legal licensed operating qualifications, stable cross-market business operation capabilities, customer trust and industry entry barriers.
AI runs through the entire business chain of risk control and compliance, transaction processing, operational services, and fund management in the field of cross-border payments.
It plays an important role in intelligent risk control and anti-money laundering, intelligent customer service and localized services, business insights and global business decision-making empowerment.
However, the large-scale implementation of AI in cross-border payments currently faces challenges such as widely varying global regulatory rules, fragmented and dispersed cross-border data, and a shortage of comprehensive talents.
In the future, AI will become the underlying infrastructure, intelligent risk control center, global fund dispatching brain and full-link service manager in cross-border payments.
It will reconstruct the entire link of cross-border collection and payment, provide data support for Chinese enterprises to go overseas, and help enterprises operate in compliance with regulations, save money, and increase operational efficiency.
Lianlian Digital recently officially announced its comprehensive upgrade from “cross-border payment expert” to “AI-native new global smart financial infrastructure”.
This is because the global digital payment field is undergoing profound changes, and cutting-edge technologies such as AI have reshaped the production relations in the financial services field.
Lianlian Digital’s goal is to become a trustworthy “AI-native” intelligent financial infrastructure builder, reconstruct payment forms, reshape customer relationships, and upgrade organizational genes.
