AI tokens are becoming a product in China. Banks, telecom carriers, restaurants, coffee shops, and a district government are packaging access to artificial intelligence as rewards, subscriptions, and financial services. The shift turns a technical unit used by AI models into something consumers can receive, spend, and compare.
An AI token is the small unit of text an AI model processes when it generates a response. Daily token consumption in China surged from 100 billion in early 2024 to 500 trillion in mid-2026, creating room for companies to sell tokens much like data, minutes, or other digital allowances.
Chinese open-source and open-weight models can cost 60% to 90% less than comparable models from OpenAI and Anthropic. That price gap gives businesses more room to attach AI access to ordinary purchases, even though most users still encounter AI through an app or feature without seeing a token balance, as Zhao put it.
Credit cards now come with AI allowances
Financial institutions have moved first by turning tokens into card rewards. In July, Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI launched a credit card named after its Kimi model in partnership with the Agricultural Bank of China and American Express.
Application opening for the Kimi–American Express–ABC tri-party co-branded credit card took place on July 10, 2026. The card gives a consumer-facing product a direct connection to an AI model, an arrangement that makes a credit benefit look less like cash back and more like access to computing.
China Merchants Bank launched a credit card for AI developers offering up to 1.8 billion tokens. Shanghai Pudong Development Bank launched another credit card for AI developers with subsidies worth up to 3 billion tokens.
The numbers are large enough to sound like financial rewards, even though their practical value depends on the model and the amount of text processed. A billion tokens is an impressive headline; the bill still depends on what those tokens actually buy.
Telecom carriers have taken a simpler route. China Telecom launched a series of trial commercial token packages on May 17, 2026, with consumer plans starting at 9.9 yuan ($1.40) a month for 10 million tokens.
China Mobile offered 400,000 tokens for 1 yuan, or 14 cents. China Unicom introduced monthly plans ranging from 15 yuan ($2.10) for 6 million tokens to 45 yuan ($6.30) for 18 million tokens.
Tokens are escaping the app
Chinese businesses are also attaching AI access to everyday transactions. Beijing’s AGI Bar offers customers unlimited access to DeepSeek V4 Flash after they buy a drink and connect to Wi-Fi, while Beijing’s Jingu Yuan dumpling restaurant gives customers 10 yuan ($1.40) worth of computing credits after a meal.
An upcoming 24-hour coffee shop in Changsha plans to offer customers AI tokens with their coffee. On Alibaba-owned Xianyu, sellers advertise packages containing millions of tokens for a few dollars through day passes or monthly subscriptions.
On August 9, 2026, a customer looked at a board at AGI Bar in Beijing. The board represents a new kind of menu—one where computing access sits beside drinks, meals, and other familiar purchases.
The most ambitious use reaches beyond rewards and subscriptions. Banks in Guangzhou launched a financial product called “token loan” in August, allowing banks to measure a company’s token production and consumption when deciding its borrowing capacity.
Bank of China, China CITIC Bank, and Bank of Guangzhou are involved in token loans. The product treats AI activity as a business signal, using token production and consumption to help measure how much a company can borrow.
That gives tokens a role in consumer marketing, telecom pricing, corporate finance, and local commerce at the same time. China’s banks and carriers are not waiting for users to understand the machinery behind AI; they are putting the machinery on the receipt.
The approach also exposes the limits of token-based pricing. Users may understand 1 yuan, 15 yuan, or 45 yuan, but token counts remain tied to how a model processes text and how much access a particular service provides.
Still, the market is moving before the terminology becomes comfortable. With daily consumption reaching 500 trillion in mid-2026, AI tokens are no longer only an internal unit for model operators—they are becoming a reward, a subscription, a credit, and perhaps the least appetizing item ever added to a restaurant loyalty program.
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