Starbucks teams up with Alipay for AI coffee alarm

Starbucks and Alipay Ah Bao have launched an AI-based "Coffee Alarm Clock" service for consumers in China, marking a new consumer service partnership between the coffee chain and Alipay's AI agent platform.

The feature lets users set a recurring Starbucks order in the Alipay app with a voice request to Ah Bao, Alipay's AI agent. A customer can ask the system to buy a drink at a set time each day. The agent then stores the request, starts the order process at the scheduled time and asks the user to confirm payment.

Users remain in control throughout the process, according to Alipay. If a request lacks key details, the system asks follow-up questions before setting up the task, and users can cancel the arrangement at any time.

The launch is part of Alipay's broader push to expand everyday services through Ah Bao, which went live in June 2026. The agent now offers more than 10,000 services across more than a dozen categories, including hospitality, dining, travel and pet care.

These services include paying utility bills, booking pet care, finding electric vehicle charging points and arranging transport. Retail brands including McDonald's, KFC, Mixue Bingcheng, Luckin Coffee and Haidilao have also connected their services to Ah Bao, allowing users to order and pay through chat.

Service expansion

Alongside the Starbucks feature, Ah Bao has added a new "Service" module at the top of its main page. The section is intended to help users check and manage the status of services they have asked the AI agent to handle.

The recurring task model used for the coffee order is not limited to drinks purchases. Alipay says the same approach can be applied to other routine services, including booking rides in advance.

The company is also extending Ah Bao beyond its own app environment through what it calls the AHA protocol, a system intended to support interoperability across devices and AI agents. According to Alipay, this allows services available through Ah Bao to be accessed from smartphones, vehicles and AI glasses.

One example involves Xiaomi smartphone users. They can make a request through Xiaomi's Xiao AI, which then works with Ah Bao to complete a range of daily service tasks, Alipay says.

Ah Bao is currently integrated with five leading smartphone brands that together account for more than 70% of the market, as well as 16 leading carmakers, according to Alipay. The company says a single merchant integration with Ah Bao can therefore extend service access beyond Alipay users to people interacting through other connected devices and platforms.

Developer fund

Separately, Alipay said it will invest 10 million RMB a year to create an Emerging AI Agent Award. The fund is aimed at developers, merchants and independent software vendors building consumer-facing AI services for the Ah Bao ecosystem.

The initiative is intended to support the growth of AI agent services and encourage more life-service applications. Consumers with ideas for AI agents will also be eligible for cash prizes, Alipay said.

Part of that effort includes Qmuse, an Alipay tool that lets developers build AI agents using natural language rather than code, according to the company. Those developers may then have an opportunity to commercialise services through Ah Bao.

The announcements show how Chinese consumer internet groups are trying to turn AI assistants into transaction tools tied to routine spending. Rather than focusing only on search or conversation, platforms are increasingly linking AI agents to ordering, bookings and payments that can be scheduled or triggered by a simple instruction.

For Starbucks, the arrangement offers another route into China's mobile commerce market through a service built around repeat purchasing. For Alipay, it adds a recognisable consumer brand to a network it is positioning as an access point for a broad range of daily services across devices.

Alipay says it connects more than one billion consumers with more than 80 million merchants across China, and that its platform already integrates more than 10,000 services spanning travel, healthcare, tourism and entertainment.

The latest launch places everyday coffee orders alongside bills, transport and other regular purchases as services that AI agents can organise before a user approves the final transaction.