UnionPay launched an initiative to collaboratively develop, govern, and deploy AI in financial services, focusing on trusted, explainable AI systems; cross-industry collaboration; openness to share models and solutions to cut SME transformation costs; and lifecycle governance with tiered risk management and enhanced compliance.

Six partnership rounds at the event covered AI-themed cards, a cross-border agentic payments ecosystem, AI-powered merchant empowerment, joint commercialization of base innovations, and broader ecosystem collaboration across the financial value chain.

The initiative aims to build an open, shared, and well-governed financial AI ecosystem that accelerates digital finance, using the National AI Application Pilot Base as its backbone.

The 1+6+N framework centers on a unified National AI Application Pilot Base portal with six centers, hosting 11 models, 14 datasets, 59 demonstrations, and 61 services across 145 core resources, plus six independent capabilities for computing, datasets, finance-specific models, AI security, standards, and a pilot sandbox.

The framework also outlines benchmark use cases and standardized AI solutions spanning intelligent payments, inclusive finance, consumption growth, risk management and compliance, and operational excellence.

In essence, the 1+6+N structure comprises a central portal, six independent capabilities, and a curated portfolio of use cases and solutions across key financial domains.

Key outcomes from the National AI Application Pilot Base include pooling resources to reduce costs and data silos, strengthening AI security for large language models, and accelerating real-world applications like agentic payments, credit risk management, and merchant digital transformation.

UnionPay unveiled three proprietary financial AI technologies at WAIC 2026: a financial transaction time-series foundation model, the Agentic Payment Open Protocol (APOP) framework, and a privacy-preserving LLM inference solution.

On July 18, UnionPay unveiled phased achievements of the National Pilot Base for AI Application (Financial Sector) and introduced the 1+6+N framework, highlighting partnerships with over 100 banks, firms, and researchers and a joint governance initiative for financial AI.

Dong Junfeng, UnionPay Chairman, underscored AI’s rapid impact on finance and shared progress since the 2025 launch, emphasizing resource sharing, collaborative governance, reduced adoption barriers, and strengthened security and risk management.

The framework enables ecosystem partners to access mature financial AI capabilities without building from scratch, reducing deployment costs and accelerating adoption across banking, merchant services, and other sectors for marketing, analytics, risk management, and digital transformation.