Filed under payments.

A Chinese Merchant, an AI Buyer, an AI Fraudster

China's largest e-commerce platforms have placed AI agents on both sides of the checkout in the same fiscal quarter — one places the order, one adjudicates the dispute, both owned by the platform. Alibaba's own CommerceAgentBench found the strongest frontier model completes 61.7 per cent of end-to-end commercial tasks, while a parallel HCI study mapped an active underground economy of AI-fabricated defect claims. The merchant carries the cost of both error rates.