Author: Alan｜Biteye Content Team

On June 17, WeChat's official account "WeChat Pai" announced the official release of the WeChat Pay AI Exclusive Card. According to the official description, users can express consumption needs in conversations with Workbuddy and complete related payments through the AI Exclusive Card.

This sounds very interesting: in the future, if you ask AI to order a milk tea, buy a service, or subscribe to a tool, the AI could run the entire process by itself.

But after actually experiencing it, we found that the WeChat AI Exclusive Card currently does not support AI "fully automatic consumption." A more accurate understanding is: it is a layer of payment capability opened by WeChat Pay to AI Agents, but every transaction still requires user confirmation, and whether a purchase can actually be completed depends on the Agent, Skill, third-party platform authorization, and product fulfillment process.

This article will start with two questions and one hands-on test:

1. What exactly is the WeChat AI Exclusive Card?

2. What can it do and not do right now?

3. Test using it to order a milk tea and see how many pitfalls there are.

I. Conclusion First: The WeChat AI Exclusive Card is not a "card AI can swipe freely"

From a product mechanism perspective, the WeChat AI Exclusive Card is more like a "small wallet" isolated from the main WeChat wallet.

Users need to bind the AI Exclusive Card first, then top it up from their WeChat wallet. After that, related AI Agent consumption will be deducted from this independent balance first, rather than directly using the money in the user's daily WeChat wallet.

Simply put, it mainly addresses three questions:

First, where does the money for AI consumption come from.

The AI Exclusive Card has an independent balance, making the fund boundary clearer.

Second, can AI consumption be controlled.

Each payment actually still requires the user to scan a code and confirm on their phone; it is not an automatic AI deduction.

Third, how to manage AI consumption records.

AI-related expenses are separated from regular WeChat Pay transactions, making them easier to view and manage.

II. How to Activate: The entry is in the Workbuddy conversation

WorkBuddy is a desktop office efficiency agent launched by Tencent, closer to an Agent workbench with an interface similar to CodeX. It can understand user goals in conversations and then call external capabilities through different "expert" Agents or Skills to complete tasks, such as office processing, information queries, local life services, etc.

This time, the WeChat Pay AI Exclusive Card was first integrated into WorkBuddy, which also means WeChat Pay is not directly opening up to all AI applications but is first testing the complete chain of "AI initiates payment, user confirms deduction" in a relatively controllable Agent scenario.

The actual activation process is not complicated:

Step one, ask in the Workbuddy dialog box:

"How can I use the WeChat AI Exclusive Payment Card?"

The Agent will return a jump link ⬇️

Step two, after clicking the link, you need to scan the code with WeChat to bind.

There is a small detail here: the binding link is only valid for 5 minutes, so you need to scan the code as soon as possible after it is generated.

Step three, read and agree to the relevant agreements, enter your payment password, and then you can complete the binding.

Step four, after binding is complete, users can top up the AI Exclusive Card from their original WeChat wallet.

The activation and top-up experience is quite smooth. However, the real issue with AI payment is not "how to activate the card"; the main event is after activation, whether the AI can actually help users consume smoothly.

III. What scenarios is it currently suitable for?

According to the instructions given by Workbuddy, the AI Exclusive Card is mainly aimed at several types of AI consumption scenarios:

1️⃣ Purchasing paid content

Such as reports, data, professional analysis services, etc.

2️⃣ Calling paid APIs or tools

Such as certain internet plugins, professional database queries, pay-per-use tool capabilities.

3️⃣ Subscribing or renewing services

Such as in-platform value-added features, membership services, etc.

These scenarios share a common point: the payment object is relatively standardized, the consumption chain is short, and the fulfillment method is relatively clear.

However, unfortunately, so far the editor has not been able to test out these three types of applications where Workbuddy can directly call the AI Exclusive Card for payment. According to Workbuddy, certain specific paid built-in features need to be triggered ⬇️

IV. Hands-on Test: Letting Workbuddy order a Heytea for me, failed

🥤We tried a very intuitive life scenario: letting Workbuddy order a cup of Heytea for me.

The result hit a limitation at the first step. Workbuddy itself cannot directly complete this kind of food delivery or tea ordering request; it needs to call the corresponding life service Skill.

So, referring to WeChat's official demonstration, we chose the "Meituan Life Assistant" Skill.

At this step, a new cost issue appeared: just generating the QR code to log into the Meituan account consumed 185.37 points. In comparison, the daily login bonus for Workbuddy is 150 points.

That is to say, before even starting the actual order, just the authorization login step had already exceeded the daily free point limit.

After completing the account login authorization, we continued to ask it to order milk tea. When the AI Exclusive Card payment link popped up, the experience was indeed very close to "AI buying things for me."

But after payment, we discovered that what Workbuddy actually purchased was not the cup of milk tea we wanted, but a Meituan group-buying voucher that did not meet the requirement.

The payment action was completed, but the purchase result did not align with the user's needs.

V. Reason for Failure: The problem is not with payment, but with the Agent execution chain

In fact, this failure cannot simply be attributed to the AI Exclusive Card being "not user-friendly." More accurately, the AI Exclusive Card is responsible for payment capability, not complete purchasing capability.

What really got stuck was the Agent execution chain.

A task like "order a milk tea for me" involves at least the following steps:

Identifying user needs, calling third-party platforms, completing account authorization, selecting the correct product, confirming the fulfillment method, initiating payment, user confirming payment, completing subsequent fulfillment...

The AI Exclusive Card only covers the "payment" part of this. As for the preceding product identification, platform redirection, account authorization, product matching, and the subsequent delivery or verification, all deeply depend on the capabilities of the Agent and third-party Skills.

So in this experience, the AI did trigger the payment, but did not complete the "correct purchase."

This is also a common problem currently faced by many AI Agents: They can invoke tools, but are not yet necessarily capable of stably completing complex real-world tasks.

VI. Current Mechanism: Users Still Retain Final Payment Confirmation Authority

From a security perspective, the AI-exclusive card does not allow AI to bypass the user and make direct payments.

The current mechanism can be broadly summarized as follows:

This design is relatively restrained and aligns with the current reality of AI consumption scenarios.

If AI could make autonomous payments directly, the risks would actually be very high: purchasing the wrong product, placing duplicate orders, erroneous subscriptions, and being induced to spend would all become real problems.

Therefore, the WeChat AI-exclusive card is currently more like a small WeChat wallet with a controllable limit, per-transaction confirmation, and isolation from the main account.

Finally

If you just want to experience the WeChat AI-exclusive payment card, you can try applying for one, but it is recommended to start with low-amount, low-risk, digital service scenarios. However, please keep the following three points in mind:

1️⃣Top up a small balance first; do not top up too much at once.

2️⃣Before making a payment, carefully check the product name, amount, and fulfillment method.

3️⃣Do not assume the AI Agent understands your real needs, especially when it involves specific physical stores, delivery, group-buying vouchers, and set meals.